


The Sacrifice

by Catheryne



Category: Gossip Girl, The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries
Genre: AU, F/M, Gen, Historical, Multi, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-04 10:08:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 57,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1775287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catheryne/pseuds/Catheryne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Historical romance. AU. During the Hundred Years' War, various personalities converge and conflict in their fight for crowns, legacies, and love. (Blair, Klaus, Chuck, Caroline, Stefan, Nathaniel, Elijah, Katerina, Serena etc)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Prologue

In times of war, when all the gold in the kingdom's coffers went to defending the rights of the monarch to the throne of another kingdom, when the dignity and power of the bloodline was at stake, there were no glorious courts or grand celebrations.

Klaus Mikaelson, only recently knighted by his own father, bore himself straight and regal in the heavy custom black armour that sent a tremor of horror to all that beheld him in battle. It had recently been cleaned, and now the armour gleamed in the half-shadowed chapel as he waited at the end of the aisle for his bride. His little French bride, one not be refused, an offering that made his own father crow with pleasure when he received the missive and the offer.

"You would have me wed this girl, one I have not seen," Klaus had stated, without the lilt of a question. One did not expect to love a bride. In truth his father did not love his mother, he did not think. Ever truer, Klaus doubted that his own father held any such regard for his many children. "What does this bride bring to the table?"

"Riches from France you need," the king told him, "and another bloodline in the family to bring your bid closer to their throne." His father paused and curled his finger to Klaus, bidding him come closer. "None of your brothers have the instinct, the drive, the hunger that you have, Niklaus. None of your brothers were born to be king. You are my remaining hope to reclaim what was lost to me by the accident of being born out of the female line. Our bloodline shall not lose our inheritance because of something so trivial, son. Your children with her shall be direct descendants of my mother, sister to a French king, and grandchildren to another."

Klaus took a deep breath, and with a somber nod acknowledge the same passionate ambition to his father. "Then if this girl is my key to open those gates that have been locked to you, father, use her I will."

"Use her, and let me be alive to hear the crowds in the fatherland chant their welcome," the king muttered. He affectionately slapped Klaus on the cheek, then gripped the nape of his neck. "All hail, Klaus, son of Mikael, king of England and France."

Klaus closed his eyes, squeezed them tightly shut as the words washed over him. "You humble me, father, yet all the same fill me with pride that you have such faith in your son."

"Then wed, and be king."

"I am ever your humble servant, father," Klaus acknowledged.

In the dark chapel he stood, and awaited as the delegation from France crowded the entry way to the chapel. Klaus did not let pass a single face that he did not burn into his brain. These were the witnesses to his marriage, and would each be previous proof when he does wage his war for his throne.

Klaus noted the handful of men who served as the princess' escorts, memorized the features. On his marriage bed he would ask his new bride for the names for his records. There were the young ladies that Klaus imagined have been sent to be part of the princess' household.

He certainly hoped the princess was not sentimental. He would not have ladies of the French court, loyal only to their own king, be seated in the most intimate circles of his kingdom. It would only be intelligent to install his own sister in his queen's household, until Rebekah herself was sent for her own marriage to strengthen the family standing.

And then he saw the litter covered by the heavy veil. For the practicality of this marriage Klaus felt the thrill that rushed over his entire body. He supposed it was only healthy. He would spend the rest of his life with his bride, and as a man of eighteen years he was at a prime to bed a wife and create spawns that would fill all the castles that he would take.

Armies of his children, all loyal and loving to him, blind in their faith, fanatic in their admiration.

The veil parted, and the view was hampered by a rather generous-bodied woman that stopped before it. Klaus held his breath. The ample woman moved to the side and revealed to him a girl-a young girl-an ethereal beauty of a dark-haired girl, with skin as flawless and pale as he ever did see, with full red lips and large, dark, liquid eyes.

But a child nonetheless.

He threw a look to his father, who stood at the opposite end of the altar and regarded the child with a sneer. Klaus turned back to the child, who walked forward with her hand in the woman's, a woman he now realized was a maid. The child walked with her head held high, and he noticed the ever so slight tremor of her bottom lip. The girl was terrified, yet in the way she walked, struggling to keep upright despite the heavy, bejeweled wedding gown, she showed her courage.

Klaus could curse his cousins, for granting a child for marriage. He could tell his own father's rising fury. A child, whom likely had not had her menses, was useless in empire-building, for a man who hoped to secure his claim to a throne through children born of two bloodlines.

"What is this?" his father roared, his voice echoing in the chapel. "This is preposterous!"

The child stopped still on her tracks, throwing a look to her nurse. The slight body drew closer to her nursemaid. Klaus heard the muttering in French.

"Father," Klaus said, his voice low. He descended from the raised dais and walked towards the child. He knelt before the princess. "Je m'apelle Klaus."

From the skirts of her nurse, the princess extended a hand. "Blair," she said to him. Klaus took her hand and placed a kiss on her knuckles.

The girl. The child was pure royalty coursing through her very veins. He could see on her face the long lines of kings and queens they would produce together, with this beauty and courage thrumming in such a slight body. She was the key that would help unlock the monarchies of all the lands across the channel, not just France.

"I shall marry her," Klaus declared to his father. He turned to the king that stood by the altar. "What is a few more years to wait, father, while I amass what lands I am able and forge what alliances I can? Let me surround the French throne through might. I shall build our holdings from shore to shore before we even consummate this marriage."

"A child, Niklaus," the king growled. "I should send her head back home to her father."

Klaus returned to his father's side. He grasped his father's hand, feeling the painful unrelenting gold in his fist. "A Waldorf child, in whose veins flow the blood of conquerors, blood more precious than any the world has seen in five hundred years." He whispered, "I can use her. Let me possess her now."

The king turned to the young princess standing at the aisle. He extended a hand towards the girl and her nurse, then bid them go forward. "Bienvenue dans la famille, princesse."


	2. Part 1

**Part 1**

There were pangs of hunger in the depths of her belly and fear in the eyes of her father and mother, both unfamiliar, both staggering in the way they had come upon them one day. The entire town of Calais gathered round the governor it seemed. To Caroline Forbes it was a day of infamy when the governor stood in the square and declared the only demand of the prince that lay in wait outside their thick city walls.

She had been much too protected. Her parents spoke of the siege in whispers as if she could not notice that the marketplaces had dwindled in the last months, that no food nor wine came through the large city gates, or that they had not seen the countryside from within the walls as the gates never opened these months past.

Calais was under siege, and the town was much too proud to surrender, waiting for its king to aid them.

Yet one by one they fell-from hunger, from thirst, from illness. Inside the wide expanse of the town they fell. And soon what meat could be found was prepared and cooked to feed a town forsaken by its king. It started with the cattle, with the fowl. Soon the fish dwindled as even on the walls that faced the sea the enemies abound.

"The Black Prince," Caroline heard on the streets, from voices quaking with fear. "Tis the Black Prince waiting past the city walls."

In truth she stank, she knew full well. But for a city so positioned by the water it was difficult now to even get a fresh supply. The English and the Black Prince's men so guarded what came in and out of the town as the Black Prince starved out the city. She could not be ashamed. The entire town was filthy and starving and even so they gathered unhealthily crowded in the square to hear the governor in their desperate state for good news of their salvation.

Her mother and father would not have wished for her to learn their sorry state, but she saw the way her father looked at her in the morning. She doubted he had the strength to keep her from much of the truth anymore, not when there was not even a slice of bread on the table.

Caroline fell into step with the crowd, saw her father standing by the governor up on the platform. They conferred in quiet whisper, somber, and when her father raised his head and scanned the crowd that watched. Caroline frowned as she watched, and then felt a familiar hand resting on the small of her back. It was her mother, smiling sadly at her.

"Is it true that the very devil awaits us outside, mother?" Caroline whispered. At her mother's look of alarm, Caroline shrugged. "The entire town is dying, which means I die along with everyone else. You may as well tell me the truth. Is it the Black Prince camped outside the walls these many months past?"

Her mother nodded. "But we shall keep you safe, Caroline, I swear."

Caroline noticed the rings under her mother's eyes, and the heavy slouch of her father's shoulders up on that platform. Before she could offer to keep herself safe, the governor cleared his throat to address the town.

"Good people of Calais, the Black Prince has razed towns and cities across of France and the rest of the continent," the governor began. "But Calais withstood him and his army for nigh on ten moons. We have held out for our king, but our king is not powerful enough to defeat this army."

There were audible gasps, as if this was the first time some of the citizens had recognized that they were no match for the soldier prince. Caroline turned to glare at one such surprised and now sobbing citizen. She had been protected, but certainly she could not be surprised that months cut off from supply and civilization did not mean that France could not defeat the English.

"What do they want?" Caroline called out to the governor, much to the dismay of her mother. "Is it riches the Black Prince desires? We have jewels and gold and fine cloths. Let them pillage the town and save our lives."

"We have held out too long, cost the Prince too much. He shall not cease this siege until blood flows red in Calais." The governor continued, "I know the stories well, of the massive damages and the lives lost under the Black Prince's blade."

The governor turned to the crowd, and Caroline turned her head to look at the same direction that the governor did. She noticed that the wealthiest merchant of Calais, Bartholomew Bass, intently spoke with his son Charles. And then there seemed to be quiet reflection as Bartholomew grasped his son by his neck, then kissed his forehead in some dignified goodbye.

And then Bartholomew climbed up to the same platform as Caroline's own father William.

"Good citizens of Calais," declared Bartholomew Bass, "the Black Prince shall have his fill of blood, his sacrifice, to spare every last man, woman and child in Calais. He has deemed the suitable punishment for the audacity of this city not to surrender to him when he marched against us the year before."

Caroline watched in horror as lengths and lengths of rope appeared in her father's hands, and the governor began looping the rope around their bodies.

Caroline turned with a look of surprise towards Charles Bass, who stood with the crowd and watched silently as his own father was tied with the ropes.

"Six of our elders, our most prominent, our burghers," Bartholomew said aloud, "to carry to the Prince the keys to the city and stand in for the people of Calais. I shall be first, and William Forbes shall be with me. The Governor shall take his part."

"No!" she cried out. "Father, you cannot. What of me? You cannot leave me."

"Let them be."

The townspeople erupted into nervous chatter, and some into sobs. Caroline watched in horror as one by one those so beloved by the town stepped forward to take the three remaining places. Vanderbilt. Gilbert. Bennett. All to hang in exchange for the city.

As the burghers walked slowly down the streets towards the gates that had long been shut, Caroline watched the townspeople reach out to them with blessings and prayers. She met her father's eyes, saw the apology in them, could not and did not accept it.

She turned towards Charles Bass, who she had not spoken to even once in the years she had lived in Calais. He had been away much of his youth, sent by his own father to represent him in his businesses with the king and the surrounding cities. Her mother had cautioned her against befriending the Bass son—too angry, too rich, too vain, too extravagant, too much of everything that the entire time often frowned upon. Yet in Calais, Charles Bass sat atop many of the people their own age.

For a brief moment she thought her mother would stop her. Instead, Elizabeth Forbes watched teary eyed as the parade of the doomed men steadily moved towards the gate. Her own mother was too absorbed by the ill-fated march to pay much attention now to Caroline and her own mistakes.

"How could you allow this?" Caroline demanded from the young man.

"Did it seem like I had a choice?" Charles returned. "It was my father or us all. What would you have done?"

Her eyes narrowed at Charles. "Certainly not chosen the way that would ensure my father's death."

Charles shook his head. "You have no understanding of the word sacrifice," Charles concluded, "if you could choose to end the lives of hundreds for what is easier for you. Such a selfish child."

Caroline's eyes narrowed. "My father is marching to a certain death, and so is yours. I would take my selfishness than be you. You would throw away your own father, so you would be safe. Which of us is selfish now?"

"This was my father's choice, so let him choose. I have no need of anyone," Charles declared.

Outside Calais

She sat atop her mare, gentle as it was. The wind blew from the sea, whipping her thick dark hair and veil. The princess studied from afar her husband, reading nothing of the somber way that he stared at the city walls that for months would not give. What stubborn wall it was, thick and strong not even digging trenches around it could sent the considerable fortress crumbling. What a stubborn city it was, months on end without restocking meat and grain.

Such a marvelous, stubborn, strong city.

Blair wondered how many graves were freshly dug in the city since Klaus and his army surrounded the walls.

It had been ten full years since she was in French soil, and upon her return this was the very first that her husband would take her. Months in France and life was nothing but the dreary embroidery in the tent while she sat to listen to the tactical planning that her husband conjured mere feet away from her.

This was the household that she ran, far different from her education to run her husband's castle. The Black Prince's bride of ten years ran an army household. There was little food in stock, little to drink. She had in her role as Klaus' bride sent home to England and the king the call for more supplies. A day or two of delay and the men behind Klaus Mikaelson would be weak as Calais.

These were affairs that Klaus had no mind for, and this was how she served her role. Blair certainly served no other purpose, seemed to be unnecessary in the grand scheme of his quest for an empire.

"We should return home," Blair advised as she slowed her mare alongside his destrier. "We shall achieve nothing here."

When he turned to her it was with fury, sending her heart racing to her throat. "Your place is in the tent, princesse. Once again you mind business not yours."

Blair's lips thinned. She sat straighter on her mare, shoulders high despite the heavy weight of her cape upon them.

Still he blamed for the radical reduction of the food and wine, when during a meet at the far edges of the camp where he had gathered his leaders, Calais had opened its gates and out stumbled old men and women, children, many citizens that would be useless in battle and merely consume much of the reserves in the city.

Blair had given the desolate group respite, served them bread and wine and gave them much to spare before sending them on their way. Calais may have abandoned them, and Blair had seen enough of the Black Prince's raids to know what he would have done. And so hurriedly, as the night began to fall and she had known that Klaus would soon return, Blair had ushered them into a way around their own camp so they may escape without pursuit.

The Black Prince had come, had roared, had sent his army after them in his fury. He could have filled his trebuchets, the catapults, with the corpses of the aged men and rained dead bodies of the wretched upon Calais. Instead he was out weeks' worth of food and drink, and was left with a bride who had shamed him before him own men.

"I could kill you," he had warned her grimly as he pushed her into her tent.

And even as she stumbled back upon her cot she raised her chin and parried to him, "Yet you need me."

"One day I shall be strong with lands and men, and perhaps I will have no need of your blood to bolster me."

She had drawn a breath of relief then. "When that day comes, Klaus, I shall offer my neck to your blade. Until then I have a voice and a will, and they shall together work to spare every drop of French blood that they can."

And at the proud declaration he had seemed to rest back on his haunches and asked, "What has ever happened to my innocent child bride?"

The yawning moan of the heavy city gates of Calais drew her attention back to the present, where for the first time Blair took a peek inside the ravaged city. Her lips parted as she craned her neck to see. It was a sight to behold, one that so easily broke her heart. Slowly, with the audible weeping of the city behind them, men as old as her father would have been or even older, walked out of the city gates. The first of the men was older, his hair white, noose around his neck as he bore loosely in his hands the keys to the city and the castle.

"This is it," she heard Klaus murmur beside her, triumph lacing the wonderment in his voice.

To Blair, it was humiliation, anguish.

In the far distance she felt the heated gaze on her, and her eyes drifted over the old man's shoulder and to the crowd standing by the gates, a young man with his dark eyes narrowed as he watched her. Reluctantly, almost impossibly, Blair tore her eyes away from him as she turned to Klaus.

"You think to murder them all, old men, weak and defenseless?"

The burghers were some distance away, and Blair was certain in the middle ground between Calais and the rest of his army, they were the only two that could hear the other.

"You do not have a say in my decisions. You cannot have a hand in my kingdom, wife."

She looked coldly at him. "I have no hand in any part of your life, and I have allowed it." At his smirk, and his glare, she said instead, "I have with full gratitude accepted that you have allowed me. But I will not sit idly by as you murder good men who would sacrifice themselves for their own city."

"You are a child. You have no head for politics and for building empires."

When he turned towards his men, Blair stopped him. "Loyalty. Do you not admire loyalty above all else, crave it more then you crave love or wealth or any affection?" Blair gestured to the burghers. "These men are prepared to die out of loyalty, Klaus."

From the gates of Calais Blair sensed the struggle. She turned in time to see a young woman, who ran in full abandon towards the burghers, in such wanton, unrestrained exertion that her golden hair fell free of its bun and the lace that covered it. The young woman flung herself towards one of the burghers, and madly pulled away at the noose around the man's neck.

"Family, Klaus," Blair whispered. When she looked back at her husband it was to see the dark fascination in the Black Prince as he watched the young woman grasping at her father's shoulders as she sobbed. "You cannot murder these men in cold blood, and tear apart their families."

"You are a sentimental girl, Blair," Klaus said quietly, still not taking his eyes away from the scene before him.

That was all he thought of her. She swore she was much more, knew she was much more. "Tell yourself all you wish to believe, your grace. I will not sit still in a dark cabin, protected from the truth of what evil my lord husband can do. Kill them before my eyes, my lord, if you dare." Blair paused. "Or show me your compassion. I have not seen your compassion for so long. I am one of very few who shall attest that there is mercy inside you. I know you. Let them go, Klaus."

Looking directly into her eyes, he grimly declared, loud enough so that his men would hear the order, "Round up the heirs and heiresses of Calais, my friends, and haul them aboard. The princess requires company and England can refresh its coffers with ransom from the French." To Blair, he said, "This is how you tear apart families, shame your enemy, and profit for England. Let me be clear, princesse. You do not know me. No one knows Klaus Mikaelson. No one ever will."

He kicked the side of his destrier, and rode away towards the shore. The men galloped past her towards the city of Calais. Blair watched frozen on her mare as the young woman who had so bravely broken away from the city to hold her own father was taken. She saw the man who had been studying her with such loathing step forward, then peacefully and with acceptance allowed himself to be pulled behind another of Niklaus' knights.

One by one, the heirs and heiresses of Calais were taken hostage.

This was the Black Prince's mercy.


	3. Part 2

**Part 2**

The princess knew, more than any other, the vast secrets that existed between this world and the other; that life and death in this world were in parallel with death and birth in the other. There were a good many voices that plagued her mind and brought her to the most secluded of the Mikaelson holdings at home and abroad, a good many voices and spirits that she could not hope for her husband to understand.

At the break of dawn Blair found herself wandering off to the edges of their camp as they waited for the ship that had been spotted a time ago. Klaus would have his hands full waiting for the ship and the cargo it brought to the newly captured city, a city whose stocks he would personally replenish with goods from England. A city he had close to torn down, destroyed with almost a year long siege, would then raise him up as a savior.

It would be another in the long list of her husband's accomplishments she would not know was a win or a loss in the grander scheme.

But Klaus and his military legacy would rightly fall off of her shoulders when the thick morning mist rose around her, when the whispers coming from the Otherworld grew louder around her, louder and louder still, until it seemed that this world and the other blended into one, and she stood with one foot here and another home.

It was in these cold, bleak mornings when she was at home, when Blair communed with the water and the earth, and the mist was her cover. This was the very part of her that Klaus would never understand, when he could brush her off as the child that he had taken as a bride those many years ago, a child so wide-eyed and innocent and much like a sacrifice from France to appease a marauding prince.

Like she was the victim in this farce.

Blair turned around and watched the mist form a cloak to surround her in a protected circle. With a certainty borne of natural instincts, Blair turned to each of the four directions. The murmur of indistinct voices around her grew louder, yet even more incomprehensible.

She drew the pouch hanging from her belt, containing precious powdered bark from the oak tree of her birth land. Over the last ten years she had very rarely used it for more than casting the portal, so precious was it. Blair dipped her fingers inside and drew a small handful, then threw some to the north. "I honor the spirits to give me the power of the earth," she whispered. And then to the east, "And the air," to the south, "the fire," and finally to the west, "the water."

Blair closed her eyes as she stood in the center of the circle. The mist around her as thick as the thickest fog now, ensuring none on the outer side of the circle would hear her or see her. She was in a world all her own.

You have not succeeded, princess, until now.

"The Black Prince is strong, much stronger than you believe," Blair replied in secret, not because she could be overheard—she believed enough in the power of the casted circle of the mist—but because she herself shuddered into reverent tones within the sanctity of the circle. "His wall is thick, impenetrable. His heart may be the blackest I have faced."

You have not succeeded. All that you touch is destroyed.

It was difficult to argue. Ten years and countless battles that Klaus had led himself, battles which she had attempted to dissuade him, all fought and won.

You fail, and we are forgotten.

Forgotten and their entire world perished. Blair had known it since she was a child at court whispered about. The halfling princess, marred by a night in which her mothered succumbed to the Sidhe. Little wonder it was so easy to be shipped off to wed a blackhearted invader.

Follow your path.

"I shall," she whispered.

You are hope.

She was the sacrifice.

Princess, a dark shadow in the mirror. The white oak tree burns. The dark prince in the mirror will destroy.

The voices were silent, and Blair knew only that the abruptness was due to the discovery of the mist. She opened her eyes and watched as the circle slowly dissipated, giving her a blurry view of the surrounding forest. She closed her eyes tightly.

"Destroy… the black prince… what will he destroy?"

She swallowed, waited for the response despite the imminent danger of discovery.

Your castle in the clouds. The dark prince will destroy your castle in the clouds.

Blair opened her eyes, frustration marring her brow. She looked up at the old overgrown tree above her and gave silent thanks for the shelter it provided. She quickly scanned around and found no prying eyes, but knew in seconds those would arrive. True enough, Blair heard the crack of twigs alerting her to newcomers who knew not to be silent.

The silly noise gave her peace, at least, that these were not terrorizing bandits who would have known better.

The bushes parted, and Blair sighed in relief at the sight of the dark-haired man who was a welcome face at the crack of dawn.

"Elijah, you have come!" Blair cried out, greeting her husband's brother, elder than Klaus, yet from the very beginning that Blair had come to join the Mikaelson's had never been in contention for the throne.

Behind Elijah, a cloaked woman appeared. She pushed her hood off her head to reveal large waves of dark hair that rivaled Blair's own. Blair turned to Elijah quizzically. When Elijah did not immediately respond, Blair turned back to the woman and bowed her head in acknowledgment, no lower than a slight acknowledgment, for very clearly the girl was common and the princess did not bow down to most anyone.

"Now how is it that I knew precisely where to find you in an ungodly hour, princess, and most of your guards do not?" Elijah asked pointedly.

Blair smiled coyly, "Mayhap I know not to share to an army where to find and kill me should a traitor wrest the crown from your brother."

Elijah chuckled lightly, but warned, "You know it is not safe to wander about with no one to stand guard over you, princess."

"Yet ten years I have done it and still I breathe," Blair pointed out. And then she reached for Elijah's hand. Quickly and surreptitiously, the woman beside Elijah looked at where Blair clasped the man's hand. "Are you come to take food and wine to Calais? How is it that such an important man delivers food to a siege, my lord?"

"Father has instructed me and Finn to allow Klaus to install us in Calais and keep it an English holding. You and Klaus, I believe, shall accompany your hostages home to England and recuperate from the year's hardship."

And what hardship it was. She and Klaus had been at odds most times, and her sole purpose for being on his side was utter failure. Blair could bleed from her very eyes with the immeasurable destruction that Klaus had left in his wake.

"France shall try and take Calais again. It is a splendid keep, an advantageous location. Finn and I are tasked to ensure France does not succeed."

Her hold on Elijah's hand tightened. "You will ensure little blood is spilled, my lord?"

"I spill what blood I need. I do not take pleasure in it," Elijah answered, "but my duty is first to the throne." And then Elijah edged close to her, tipped her chin up so she would look into his eyes. "Hold your head high, princess. Ensure your position on the throne if you are ever to be a hope for France again."

"I have been his bride for ten years, my lord. I have been useless, have no voice in his council or your father's, could barely stay his hand in murdering a starving and helpless city."

"A man shall grant his love's desire," interrupted the woman who stood watching the exchange. "My advice is to seek his heart." Elijah's brows shot up.

Blair turned to the woman. "However shall I?"

"Perhaps, my Katerina, you can enlighten the princess on our way back. I certainly had no choice but to fall in love with you."

Elijah walked ahead of the two, and Blair glanced back towards where the circle had been. There was no sign of her circle now, so Blair turned back and walked with the woman who had accompanied Elijah, common enough that there was no introduction yet trusted enough to have gone off the beaten path with a prince of England, albeit one who undoubtedly would not take the throne and be king.

"How does a wife make a husband love her?" Blair asked Katerina.

Elijah's woman—and there was no other way Blair could think of her now with so little to know—turned to her, and with a small, secret smile, one that only women could truly share with another, she said, "You are seeking answers that are within you. You only have to be brave enough to release it."

Oh, how much she could not know.

As Elijah turned at the curve, Katerina caught Blair's hand and raised a finger to her lips. When Elijah was sufficiently away, Katerina lowered her finger and told Blair, "I know why it was that you were sent to pacify England. You are one of the most powerful creatures in the world. If you truly used all of your power, you can take what you want." Blair swallowed, and she looked deep into Katerina's eyes to determine if she knew what she knew, when, and how much she had shared. And then, Katerina drew closer to her, and mouthed, "Because you are a woman, princess, and he is but a man."

At this, Blair released a trembling breath.

She turned at the noise to the side, and she saw Elijah with a lopsided grin, having only just cleared his throat. Elijah declared, "I should not leave the princess unattended with you, Katerina. What ideas you introduce to her." It was halfhearted, because Katerina walked over to Elijah and affectionately brushed a hand over his shoulder. "The supplies are being unloaded as we speak. Shall you go ahead, Katerina, into the city? I shall have the governor's chambers."

"And you want me to ensure Finn stays away from what you want," Katerina surmised.

"If you would."

"For you, my lord, anything you desire."

Blair watched closely, at the display of humility and servitude from the woman who claimed superiority over all men. She marveled at the grin on Elijah's face as Katerina left just as the sun started brightening her surroundings and warming the day. It was pity that Elijah and Katerina would remain in Calais as she left for England at Klaus' side, for there was much she could study in the interaction between the two.

Elijah offered his arm, and Blair took it as they strolled down the path back to the dock. She patted Elijah's arm. "I shall miss you and the calm you bring you to me, brother," she told him. "But Calais was once beautiful. To be so close to the sea and admire its power every day you wake… I envy you."

They came to the clearing, and she could see Klaus standing aboard the ship. Even from afar once he saw her he motioned to her.

"My husband calls. England calls," she murmured.

As she stepped forward, Elijah closed one hand over hers that rested on his arm. Blair turned back to Elijah. Elijah raised her hand to his lips. "Remember, Blair, that you have a hand that was meant to rule a kingdom, the hand of a queen. If Klaus cannot have faith in your abilities, if he will continue to cast a shadow under which you pale, you must take the reins. Have a son. I shall take regency for your son but the crown and scepter shall all be yours."

Blair's eyes widened. She took in the thrumming passion underneath her fingers. Elijah's body near quaked with his conviction. "You are suggesting treason, my lord."

"I am suggesting an alternative way, princess, to get what you want."

"And you know what I want most of all?" she whispered, highly conscious that in the large distance between them Klaus could see every move that they made.

"Ten years, Blair, and I have watched you blossom from a child to a woman. I know you want to be seen and heard. I know you want the relentless sieges to stop." His voice dropped. "I know you want your child to take the throne, to put the crown on a child of a bloodline as noble as yours."

So much truth, yet so many secrets still. "Why would you betray your brother?" she asked, because as far as she knew Elijah was as loyal to family as anyone she knew.

"I have had enough of this killing, as have you. Killing is all my father and my brother know. I have had enough of a king that would massacre."

"Peace is all I want," Blair admitted. She allowed the half-truth because it represented fully the half of her that Elijah knew. "If I have to usurp your brother's throne to do this, then that is what I shall do."

"Have a son."

"Klaus sees me as the same child that walked down the aisle." Her cheeks burned as she admitted to him, "My husband has not warmed my bed, and I fear to go to my grave childless, Elijah. I must have a child. I cannot be the end."

Blair blinked away the tears, with a plea so heartfelt she spilled the fear that was burning in her gut. Never mind that the French throne would have her brother lined up to inherit, or that her brother Aaron had several babes. Never mind that Elijah had no knowledge of the half of her blood that stemmed from a far more ancient line, one that died out by the thousands with every breath.

"I shall keep Calais in our hands," Elijah told her, "and I shall raise support for the time when we take the throne. All this I can do, Blair. But I cannot bring my brother struggling to your bed. I think there are problems you need to solve on your own, princess."

"How do I know you will not usurp the throne from my son, Elijah?" Blair challenged.

"Because I do not wish to be king. I never have. That is why Klaus had always been heir presumptive until I saw how bloodthirsty he is. Just like father."

Blair was aboard the ship within moments of the quiet conversation. Klaus greeted her at the deck. Blair looked up at her husband and hesitated for a second before extending her hand to him. He looked down at her proffered hand and Blair waited for a heartbeat, then two, until he took her hand and kissed it, right over where Elijah had.

"It is a beautiful day to sail, husband," she told him.

"We sail for home," he acknowledged. "And we have a hold of Calais' heirs and heiresses eagerly awaiting their own return home."

"Then I shall retire to my quarters and see to your hostages, Klaus."

When Blair turned around, she heard her husband call her name and she paused. "I suggest you sleep as we sail, princess. As always you rose before the dawn. With some rest your mind shall find peace and calm, and you may have a more level head and you ponder whatever it was that had you so intimately conversing with my brother."

~o~o~

When Blair next emerged from her quarters, she looked up at the sky and the full moon. She felt the breeze turn into choppy wind, biting at her cheeks. The clear sky littered with stars grew smoky, and the ship turned violently under her feet. Blair found herself tossed across the ship and onto her knees. The chill enveloped her body and Blair raced back to her husband's quarters and pushed open the door.

There was that girl, that young woman, easily recognizable to her because of the golden hair that spilled over the lone pillow on Klaus' bed. The stench of vomit assailed her nostrils, and Blair almost stepped outside of the room when the pitch of the sudden storm made her grab the doorpost.

Blair stood frozen at the doorframe. She watched in silence as her husband drew closer to the bed, to the pale, trembling, profusely sweating girl with that shock of golden hair. Klaus brought with him rolled up linen and dried the balls of sweat that gathered on the girl's forehead.

"Will you toss me overboard then?" the girl asked pitifully. Blair could almost snap at the sheer vulnerability of the question. Klaus abhorred weakness, and the girl did herself no favors. "I am sick, and a ship with a sick passenger is a dangerous ship."

"You know this from living in Calais," her husband concluded, much to Blair's surprise. Klaus dipped the linen into a bowl of water and wrung it dry, then placed the cooling cloth on the girl's forehead. "I was led to believe that today marks the day of your birth, Caroline. Do you really think that low of me?"

"You are the Black Prince. Yes, I think it matters not it is the day of my birth. It can easily be the day I die as well."

Blair's lips parted when she glimpsed her husband's face, looking down at the girl, his eyes filled with compassion and the same wonder that it had when he first spied her outside the gates of Calais, clinging to her father as Klaus contemplated on his murder. "You are spending your birthday away from family, and I apologize. You are but collateral damage. I assure you, Caroline, that I mean you no harm."

Blair looked at the young woman—this Caroline—on her husband's bed, and recognized the signs. In horror she watched as Caroline turned to her side and vomited blood, and then Klaus helped her back up to lie on his bed without fear it seemed. Caroline lay back on the bed gasping for breath. On her neck Blair could see the red and black marks that were horrifying in her knowledge.

Blair backed away from the door, and her movement brought Klaus' attention to her.

Klaus stood from the bed and walked towards Blair. Blair could see the smattering of blood on his arms. "Your prisoner is carrying the pestilence," Blair whispered harshly, low enough not to spread alarm but furious. "She will spread the disease. This entire ship is a graveyard." Lower still, more furiously, she told him, "England will be a graveyard. We are taking the pestilence home, Klaus."

He grasped her arms firmly. Blair winced at the pain. "We shall burn the ship at sea," he assured her. "I swear to you I would not have placed in danger a single man or woman. But I found her ill when I visited the hold."

"And you take her to your bed?" Blair shook her head. "Never think I do not know who you are, Klaus, after ten years."

"And do not ever think I know not who you are."

Blair paused. The ship tossed to the side.

Klaus continued, "Ten years in my castle, in my keep, in my army camps. I know you keep herbs with you, so potent and miraculous you would not name or spare them." Blair threw him a look of confusion, which she hoped would be enough to throw him off. "Dorota, your maid," he told her. "I know of the magic, Blair, and if you help this entire ship, I shall not breathe a word to the church or to my father."

But to use the powdered white oak to cure Caroline and create a potion to prevent any other infection would consume all of her stock, and there was none to be had after that. She would never be able to open the portal on her own.

"This is not witchcraft, my lord," Blair declared.

"I shall not judge you," he said slowly. "After all, all these years you have seen what I do."

Blair pushed forward into Klaus' room. She could hear the labored breathing of the young woman on the bed. She took a cup and poured some wine, then a portion of her white oak powder. Blair took a gulp and offered Klaus another. And then she concocted another serving with more of the powder, then swilled the cup around to mix. She handed the cup to Klaus.

Blair watched with hooded eyes as her husband sat gently at the side of Caroline's bed with the cup in his hand. He said her name, gently, soothingly, and even raised her head which lolled to the side. "I am dying," the girl rasped softly. "And I am exhausted."

"And I could let you die," Klaus responded. "If that is what you want, I shall leave you to die in peace. If you really believe your existence has no meaning."

The young woman's eyes opened as she stared up at Klaus with tear-filled eyes. "I have no meaning other than a hefty ransom. Perhaps I should die and save my father the burden of pooling together my weight in gold."

"You have lived your entire life in a small city like Calais—a walled city. Certainly life does not seem worth the pain. But I will let you in on a little secret. There's a whole world out there waiting for you. Great cities, and art, and music. Genuine beauty. You could have all of it. All you have to do is ask."

Caroline drew a deep, pained breath. "I do not want to die."

Klaus drew her up, then held the cup to her lips. "There you go, sweetheart." Blair flinched at the endearment. "Have at it. Happy birthday, Caroline."

As Caroline drank the wine that Blair knew for certain would heal her, Blair met Klaus' eyes over the young woman's head. "This was no witchcraft, Klaus," she told him. The storm cracked lightning outside the window. "But that, outside, the torrent that has come from nowhere—that is witchcraft, Klaus. There is a witch aboard your ship."

Before her husband could respond, Blair stumbled out of his quarters and made her way to the galley. She fetched a large container of wine and poured her precious powder into it, then placed it at the center table, then called the crew to partake. She lugged another container with her and mixed it with the powder. Blair took the container to the hold.

They looked up at her upon her arrival. The hostages slept on cots in the hold. There were not enough rooms in the cog to house them. Blair placed the wine on the floor, then braced herself against the wall as the ship rocked.

"What has the prince done to Miss Forbes?" was the first question, coming from a golden-haired young man.

Blair answered honestly, "The prince is caring for your friend. She has grown very ill, and the prince has extended a watchful eye over her." She pushed the jug of wine towards them. "She was ill with a sickness that could be caught by anyone, and I have mixed this wine with a potion that can help."

"Drink it," came the quiet demand from a young woman.

"Miss Bennett," the young man called in alarm.

Blair reached for the jug and poured herself a cup, then swallowed the wine. "I am not here to hurt any of you. It would be rather stupid of me to hurt any of you while the prince wishes to ransom you."

One by one, the heirs and heiresses held captive in the hold reached for the cups and took wine for themselves, then shared with the other. The storm outside calmed. Blair stood as the ship steadied beneath her. She peered out the porthole and saw the dark clouds slowly recede and reveal the full silver moon.

Blair breathed a sigh of relief. She stepped back, then turned to the far end of the hold. There stood a large vanity dresser, laden on its legs and table and frame with pure ivory and mother of pearl. She caught her breath at the grand beauty of it, knew immediately there was no one else for whom such a wonderful gift was meant. She walked towards the dresser and touched the intricate detail. Her lips curved at the carved letters on the frame—B W M. Her fingers rested playfully on the magnificent handle of the drawer, then fluttered to the bracelet that adorned her wrist.

"That is a thing of beauty," came the deep thrum of voice behind her, one that made the hair at the back of her neck prickle, and her breath to catch in her throat. "I hope it is yours. Something so beautiful deserves to be with someone worthy of its beauty."

Her lashes lifted, and her gaze turned to her reflection in the mirror. She saw him standing there behind her. In the dark night he seemed but a shadow until he stepped forward and revealed his face. It was the young man who had so relentlessly studied her, now still watching her. He lifted the cup of wine to his lips and swallowed.

The dark prince in the mirror.

"Who are you?" she breathed.

"Charles—Chuck. Chuck Bass. And you?"

His words, his voice. He must be the magic on the ship, for he caused her heart to beat thrice as fast, her breath to leave her body, her mind all afluster. "Never you mind," Blair choked out, and she turned on her heel and fled the hold. He reached for her arm. His skin on hers was electric, too painfully, pleasurably hot. In her haste she pulled free.

Blair realized her bracelet had fallen off her wrist. She turned back to look, and saw merely those dark, dark eyes watching her, her brilliant diamonds hanging from his fingers.


	4. Part 3

**Part 3**

Ten years ago

She was courage, filled with it. Her mother had told her as she had pinned a heart to her dress before she left home. She was courage, and she was the hope of so many.

"The Prince has a black heart," Blair had whispered to her mother.

"Hush, child. Where did you hear that?" And then Eleanor shook her head. "There is no heart so black that a bit of light cannot change it."

"I am to change his heart, mother?"

And then Eleanor knelt before her and placed a kiss on each of her cheeks. She stopped and said into her ear. "How could you not? You were born to be the lightest thing ever to come into the prince's life."

Blair climbed into the coach, then looked back to her mother standing before the home that she feared she would not see again. "Then, mother, shall I not be afraid of him?"

"You cannot ever be certain, Blair. Fear him. A healthy fear cannot hurt you. Fear him, and then, my heart, make him love you. That is how you will survive in English court. Make him love you so much it would pain him to hurt you."

Blair nodded to her mother, then leaned back in her seat. She clasped her hands together and looked up to her nurse. "Dorota, how shall I make a stranger love me?"

"There is not a person in this world, my child, who can keep from love you," Dorota assured her. But in her kind eyes, Blair saw the niggling doubt, the concern, the fear.

And so Blair nodded and closed her hands over her nurse's. "Certainly he shall."

And so it was that on that night, the child became the Lady Blair Cornelia Waldorf, a gift to the King of England for his son, a sign of peace, a sacrifice to pacify the marauder prince. When she was asked to repeat her vows, she did. She would please him. This was her husband now. This was family.

As she walked, she could feel the heavy weight of the ring on her finger, too large to fit that she fisted her hands to keep it from falling.

The castle was huge and yawning, far larger than the palace that was her home. In her heavy wedding dress, Blair trudged to this unfamiliar chamber, her footsteps echoing, bouncing against the walls. In her home after a wedding, there was a grand feast, a celebration with hundreds of guests. The silence was eerie, and Blair's eyes widened at the sight that greeted her. For the first time since she arrived, delight rose in her as she laid her eyes on a bright-haired girl sitting on the bed.

"Good day, sister," greeted the girl, who was just as old as she. "My name is Bekah. I wanted to meet you, so here I am. And there you are. You look rather grand."

Blair nodded. "It is my wedding day. I must be beautiful for my lord husband."

"Which one did you marry?" Bekah asked.

"Do you have many brothers and sisters? I have none," Blair offered.

Bekah shrugged. "Too many brothers and no sister at all." And then she grinned, and her smile lit up the dark chambers. "Until now. Now I have a sister." She took her hand and Blair felt the warmth of the other girl's grasp. "Goodness, you are chilly."

Blair pulled away from the girl's grip, and rubbed her hands together, warming herself. She could not be cold to touch. She had once heard a harsh remark in court, of a lord calling his wife cold, and he did not sound pleasant at all. Blair licked her lips. "I am married to Prince Niklaus."

"He is father's favorite. Father will adore you," Bekah surmised, and that sent a thrill through Blair. A father who adored her, she thought to herself. How fascinating an experience it would be, to have a sister to talk to, a father who adored her, and a husband who loved her.

The large doors yawned open, and Blair looked up to the sight of two figures darkening the doorway. She watched in fascination as the first man walked into the room, leaving who appeared to be the prince her husband by the doorway. This was a dark-haired man, tall, and held himself well. He extended a hand towards Bekah, and declared, "You need to be abed, Rebekah. Your nurse has turned the castle inside out searching for you."

Bekah hopped off the bed and walked quickly out of the chambers, her head held high. The moment she had her brothers behind her, she burst into a run.

And then the dark-haired man reached down and gently touched her hair. It was familiar, comforting. No one had done it before apart from Dorota and her own mother. Blair looked up at him, and drank his smile. "Welcome to the family, little one. I am Elijah, your husband's brother. And now yours," he told her. And then he straightened. "I shall not tarry. I shall leave you with Niklaus, as it is your wedding night."

She heard a sniffle from the corner, and she looked up to see her dearest Dorota holding her hand to her mouth.

"Take heart, Dorota," she called out gently. The bed before her made her shudder. She had grown up with whispers all around her, of the night her mother lay with a creature in all abandon. She was eight, and she could have been invisible the servants barely noticed her as they told stories and giggled their pleasure. One day she had even heard of the bedding that happened in her mother's chambers, when a visiting count wed a lady from Poitiers. "It is my duty as a bride."

Klaus turned towards the nurse with a frown, and then towards Blair. He shook his head. "You are a child, princess. There is to be no bedding tonight, no streaming blood stained sheet on the rafters." He took her hand. "You are a brave child, but I can feel you trembling. We are married. You have done more than enough of your part in this arrangement, princess. Take heart, and rest easy. This prince shall not darken a child bride's bed. There are more than enough women around who can satisfy a man's appetite."

He glanced down, and leaned to pick up the large gold ring on the floor. Her ring had fallen down, too large for her finger, too strange on her person for the absence to be noticed. Klaus placed the ring on top of the chest by the foot of the bed. "I shall have a gold chain brought to you. Your nurse can hang the ring on it as a pendant, so you can carry it around your neck until you are grown." Klaus turned around and walked towards the door. "Good night, child."

Present

The lightest Caroline had felt upon waking, was waking up that morning in the Black Prince's bed. It was not because of the stark sunshine on her face that thrummed upon her eyelids, the bare bedding beneath her, or the thin blanket that covered her. No. In Calais as an only child she had much more than the sparse luxury of a warlord's quarters. Never mind that this was a prince--The Prince--the heir apparent if all the chatter all those months could be believed.

Perhaps it was that potion he tipped down her throat to save her.

What an odd thought. The Black Prince was her savior. The Black Prince, whose reputation preceded him, turning him into a fearsome bedside story, a horror tale to be passed on from mouth to mouth. The Black Prince of England had held her so tenderly in the night and gave her back her life.

She could not hope to know many things in this hostage crisis, but what she did know was that she could not be there in those chambers. Caroline sat up quickly, and the ship beneath her lunged and pitched in a manner she recognized was merely her own head. Grabbing on to the walls she righted herself.

Upon the foot of the bed she spied her own clothes discarded. When she stepped forward to pick them up she recoiled at the stench of dried vomit coating the cloth, and remembered hazily how very sick she had been, how she had humiliated herself as she was dying. He could have a dozen people throw the clothes into the Channel. Certainly she could not wear them again.

Blearily Caroline noticed the fine clothes that draped over her now. They were simple, but the make was fine and the cloth was smooth enough to hug her limbs as she moved.

Someone had changed her clothing. Her cheeks flushed, and Caroline whirled about and reached for the door. She hung her head, and prayed her loose hair would hide her embarrassment and her face until she reached the rest of her companions.

But Fate would not be kind to her, and she found herself caught framed by the doorway, looking at a dark-haired lady through the curtain of her hair. And her cheeks flushed even darker, at the sight of a woman so regal, perfectly coiffed, while she stood barefoot and disheveled.

And she knew, just knew, there was further reason to be ashamed.

"My lady," Caroline stammered.

And very slowly, almost as if this were a dream, the woman before her raised a bejeweled hand, displaying so prominently the ring on her finger that Caroline had been educated enough to recognize. It was the princess, the Black Prince's wife, for all intents and purposes the next queen.

"Your Grace," she corrected herself. Caroline lowered her head, waiting for the gracious permission to be given that she rise. Her shoulders tensed as the moments passed and there came none. And it dawned on her so heavily, that she was standing before the princess stepping out of her husband's own quarters. "I apologize, your grace, for displacing you in the night. I assure you--"

"You assure me nothing," came the abrupt and quiet interruption. "There is nothing that happens around me that I do not know, that I did not permit. No commoner displaced me. To think so is ridiculous; to speak it is treason. No merchant's daughter shall displace the future queen."

Caroline held her tongue, which itched at the very worst to spew forth the vilest and cruelest words. But she was on a boat across the water, on her way to a land that was not hers. Instead of speaking she chose instead to keep her head low when she tried to pass.

And that meant, in the limited space within the cog, that Caroline would brush against the princess, come so close when all she wanted was to recoil. As she moved and came to the closest point she could come, the princess laid on her arm the hand upon which the Mikaelson's sparkling ring sat. "Do not make the mistake, Miss Forbes, of believing you are much more than a prisoner of war," the princess said simply.

Caroline blinked rapidly. She turned her head so she could look the princess in the eye. "Beg pardon, your grace, but I do not see any other prisoners from Calais sleeping on the Black Prince's bed."

Caroline swore in the depths of those brown eyes she saw a brewing storm. And it was then that the princess uttered, "Perhaps I should have let you die." A chill crept to the nape of her neck, and unsteadily Caroline scurried away.

Caroline rounded the corner, searching for a way to get down below to the hold with the rest of the prisoners from Calais. As she turned she could not help but peer back towards where she had left the princess. The princess stood outside the door of the quarters that Caroline had vacated, and then touched the door briefly. The princess' fingers fluttered to the ring that sparkled on her hand, the proof of her position and her power, Caroline thought. At that time the princess turned and walked away.

The Black Prince had been kind, had shown humanity the night before that Caroline never expected. And it was his angel-faced wife who could be so spiteful to wish for her death. Caroline shook her head at the irony of it all.

When Caroline descended to the hold, she stood at the doorway and swept her gaze to the stark bareness of the hold. The cots were gone, the beddings removed. "What has happened?" she exclaimed.

Bonnie, her dearest friend, stood up at the sight of her. "Caroline, you made it through the night!"

"I did," Caroline acknowledged. "The prince took care of me." The others were seated, leaning against the wall. Some of them lay down on the bare wooden planks of the boat. A pang of guilt visited her, because though humble, the prince's cot was comfortable. "What has happened here?"

"The princess has had the beddings taken--"

Caroline shook her head and rested her hands on her hips. "What evil, selfish--"

"Hush your mouth," cut the deep voice from the back. Caroline glanced towards where Charles Bass sat, glaring at her. "You know nothing, so be silent."

Nathaniel, son of the Vanderbilt, stood his position on the floor, then walked over to the center of the room. He picked up the empty jug of wine. "She brought this in the night."

"Some wine?" Caroline asked. "And of a sudden the princess has your loyalty. Has the months of the siege so deprived you that you throw your lot with the enemy."

"And a night in the prince's bed serves us better?"

"He saved my life," Caroline said quietly.

"So did she," Bonnie told her. "The princess concocted wine to heal us from what illness struck you. I am willing to wager that she had made the potion you took as well." Bonnie gestured to the hold. "The beddings were discarded at sea, to keep us from the disease."

"She is a lady of Anjou, Caroline, displaced into England as much as we shall be," Nathaniel stated. "She is not the enemy here."

~~

Up on deck, the lady from Anjou wrapped herself with a warm cloak as she crossed towards where her husband stood. Blair looked out into the choppy waters in the bright sun. The storm had calmed vastly, over the course of the morning, as it last night had not happened save from the unsteady sailing. Blair looked out into the channel and imagined land rising in the horizon as they neared England.

But they would not see land. Not for some time. It would be days more trapped in this cog with her husband, and that girl he held such obvious fascination for.

Klaus stood beside her, not moving away even as she stopped. He and she, they had come to such a good cadence. He was her prince and she was her princess, without doubt. Because of her he could expand his reach, close to legitimize his claim to the fatherland. Because of him, she was part of a family and ever closer to her goal.

Blair looked down at the blinding stones on her wedding ring. She swallowed heavily, and then she reached for his arm with her bejeweled hand. "I will be your queen," she whispered. Even with the strong wind whipping at them, carrying her words, she knew he heard her. She held her gaze steady, meeting his eyes. "I am your queen, even before you take the throne."

"This is not an occasion to doubt it," he responded quietly. "We have felled Calais, Blair. We are ever closer."

She tightened her jaw. "You disrespect me, Niklaus," she said, then added so gently, "my lord husband. When you take a young woman to your bed, no matter the reason, and keep her til the morning, you disrespect my sacrifice for your ambition."

And then he nodded, then grasped her arm and pulled her close. "It was a slip. Disagreements or fights aside, we have been wed ten years now, Blair. You are my queen. Never doubt it." And then Klaus placed a firm kiss on her forehead.

"Then give me proof of it, Klaus." She looked up at him. "Give me a son," Blair demanded, Elijah's words running through her mind, heightened and made louder by the sight of the girl from Calais, and her new, unfamiliar beauty that so fascinated her husband. "Take me to bed, Klaus," she asked. "Ten years. I am a woman grown, your grace."

Once she had lain in his bed, nude and eager, on the night after her first period of menses stopped. Another time she had stood before him naked and flushed only with the moonlight. Both times he had touched her, and then turned away.

"I am not a child, Klaus."

"And yet I look at you and see one, Blair," he told her gently. "This I cannot help."

She arched up and pressed her lips on his, and he responded by deepening the kiss. She buried her fingers in the hair at the back of his neck, pressed her soft and cold body against his. And then he pulled away, apologetic, and shook his head. "Another time," he said, "perhaps it will come. You are a beautiful child, Blair. It will come."

She was not a woman, not desirable to her own husband. If only she had the lush curves and soft, yielding body of the girl from Calais, the golden hair, those bright eyes. The girl stirred her husband in a way that Blair never could, with her slight frame and dark hair, and the look that for him would always be that of a child.

Elijah would wait too long, and her people would be forgotten. "How can I give you an empire, if you cannot give me son?"

tbc

 

 

 

 


	5. Part 4

**Part 4**

Ten years ago

Darkness covered the sun. The rolling storm darkened the sky. A thunderclap followed a long cut of lightning that lit the earth. The world rumbled, and yet the tall stones standing in the three circles stood unmoving. At the center of the countless looming stones it was pitch black, lit only by the streaks of fire in the sky.

Under the torrent of the heavy rain, the grass flattened and buried as the soil muddied. And then a hot sweep of wind angled the fall of rain. The thunder rolled, and lightning exploded like a flash of white hot light. Surrounding the circular bank, the deep ditch slowly filled with water from the storm.

They arrived with the dark clouds and silent whispers from below.

And then two spectres emerged from the center of the circle, standing on land that dried beneath their very feet. Within the circle the storm stopped.

"One soul, one creature, one halfling to seach and destroy," the older of the two narrated, in the pitch darkness his words waped from an indistinct, indecipherable language to that of the English. At the sound of it, the old king's lips grew thin. "This is the only reason we have risen to the surface, above ground once more. You have a decade til the halfling comes of age, son, before she can take her birthright."

Before him the other man knelt on one knee and bowed down his head. "I will find her, father, and destroy any obstacle that stands between you and your possession of the tribe."

"Take heed, son," the old king said, as he dragged his hand in the direction from the prince's head to his toe. "Halfling or not, she is Sidhe, and may have an unexpected hold on you." As the prince knelt, his body was covered in mist and morphed into a child. "A decade, son, to learn life as a human. It is but a split second of your life, naught but the blink of an eye. On earth you shall be Charles, and you will be taken to a man who will foster you."

The boy looked up at his father. "I shall not fail you, father, or the tuatha."

The mist rose to wrap the old king. Thicker and thicker it grew until there was nothing to see. And then there was a sudden burst of lightning, and he was gone.

In Wiltshire, the stormy day grew into the night, and then a calm morning. Villagers gathered at the outer bank of the half-filled ditch, pointing towards the center of the sacred stone circle, towards the dark huddled creature that lay unmoving at the center. It was one of the visitors to the village who sought for a way to cross, despire the caution of the elders at disturbing the peace and sanctity of the ancient stones.

It was the widower who had lost both wife and son, who stumbled out towards the huddled, sodden boy. "Lad, lad, where are your folk? How are you in the hedge?"

And blearily the prince peered up towards the man, shoved his wet hair aside. "I am an orphan, sire, stumbled my way through the fields in the storm. I know not how I ended here." And then he coughed, a real one, and he shuddered from the cold. What pain this fragile human body was. No wonder its lifetime was but a small dot of his own. "I have no home."

Bartholomew Bass nodded somberly, then placed a firm hand on the boy's shoulder. "Now you have one. I hope you are not too sickly for a crossing, lad. Home is now across the channel, in Calais."

"Better sickly in the sea, than starved and orphaned on land, sire."

"Father now," the widower Bartholomew requested. "And you, lad?"

"Charles, sire--father."

Present

Stepping onto the rocky sand beach came the dawning realization that once more she was on foreign soil, on the land that had been home for a decade. The storm that surged around them during the crossing seemed like the weeping from her chest, a wailing of the sky as once more she left France for her husband's kingdom. Even so, they had made it across the Channel with no life lost, and it was a small miracle on its own.

Blair nodded to her nurse, dear Dorota, waiting at the beach for her return. Behind Dorota waited the carriage that would take her home, and Blair was eager to rest her head back on the cushioned back of the vehicle though not as eager to once again be rocked violently during the land travel. Blair bent and picked up a handful of the English sand, then allowed wet clumps of it to fall through the wind briefly until the sand hit the ground. She did so for all four directions around her, murmuring her gratitude.

When she turned to the last direction it was to face the ship, and Blair noticed her husband staring at her. She remembered the unspoken accusation, the night the ship near fell in its entirety to the pestilence. And so Blair, holding his gaze, raised her fingers to her forehead, murmured inaudibly in full sight of everyone, lowered her fingers to her chest, to her left breast and to her right, clasped her hands together and closed her eyes.

"Should this satisfy the prince, do you think?" Blair said with her eyes closed. "Should this assure him there is no darkness in my heart?"

Dorota rested a hand on Blair's arm. "You honor the ancients, my lady." And then Blair opened her eyes and smiled down at her nurse. "There is no trouble that you bring him. Stay true. You have not forgotten."

Blair's brows furrowed briefly. "Yet they shall be," she whispered back. She felt the heat of a gaze on the nape of her neck and wondered if Klaus still watched her closely in his suspicion. Yet the heat was too distinctively unlike her husband's suspicious look, that Blair could tell it was not he. Blair told Dorota, "The white oak ash is gone." She pressed the empty pouch into her nurse's hands and pushed them down underneath the folds of Dorota's houpelande. ""I fear I cannot hear them again."

Dorota reached up and patted Blair's cheek. "I shall find a way, my lady. I know of sacred ground, right here in England. Avebury," Dorota told her. "In Wiltshire. I will find a way to Wiltshire, my lady, soon as I can."

Slowly, the burning she felt on the back of her neck spread until she could feel it lick its was down her spine. Blair gestured for Dorota to wait in the carriage, and then slowly she turned around and rested her gaze on the dark, shadowed figure at towards the back of the slowly descending passengers. Blair shrugged off the feeling, tried to, hoped to. Chuck Bass, that man in the hold that sent a spark of shock through her body the night that he reached for her.

In the distance he burned her. In the distance, this far away, he suffocated her. Blair raised her hand to her neck and feared his presence. On the ship she had wondered if he had been the darkness that near pitched them into the water. On land he showed his sheer energy, and it close to overwhelmed her. His gaze held her attention, and his eyes grew so clear and near she thought she was drowning.

"Who is the young lady?" asked a dear, familiar voice.

The hand that rested on her arm shook Blair from her stupor. Blair released a grateful sigh and turned to her friend and sister. "Bekah!" Bekah drew Blair into her arms and kissed her cheeks, then turned towards the ship and nodded in its direction. Blair saw the sight that plagued Bekah, and watched as her husband singled out that girl again to assist her off the ship. Blair answered, "A hostage from Calais."

"What right does a commoner have of service from the prince?" Bekah asked, with a lilting voice. "And shall you take it lying down, sister, or will you take it out on Niklaus on the royal bed?"

Blair saw from behind Caroline the king waiting, pride evident on his face as he watched his favored son. Blair forced a smile on her face. She excused herself from Caroline and walked over to the king to pay her respects. On the rocky beach, Blair curtsied deeply in front of King Mikael, the first for a year since she went with her husband to the siege of Calais.

Staying in front of Bekah would reveal herself. For the longest she held to the truth, for her own life. Should the king know that her husband would not bed her, it would be the end. She knew the king well by now, and the truth would cost her life. Twice she had tried, and humiliated herself on Klaus' bed. Should the king know that her husband thought her undesirable, and there was no hope of an heir blossoming in her womb, it would be fortune's best favor that she should be set aside, with even less power than now she had to hold off her husband from killing even more of her people.

"My daughter," the king greeted, extending his hand so that Blair may kiss his ring. The king took her hand and raised her to her feet. "You are home."

They turned towards the hostages, on the ground, uneasy. Before them Klaus ordered for the ship to burn. Blair watched as all the goods she had with her in the year away went up in flames with the cog.

The king held out his arms in an open gesture. "I shall not pretend to know what you have heard of my family, my guests from Calais. I know that many have whispered of the brutality and horror I wage in my wars. But you have seen the generosity of my son in allowing your burghers to live. This is a generous heart with which we have brought him up." Mikael nodded towards his son.

Klaus held out his hand to Blair, in silent command. Borne of ten years together Blair walked towards him and laid her hand in his. The prince continued, "My bride and I welcome you to England. You will be taken to comfortable quarters in the Tower. There you are free to live and roam the grounds until your ransom arrives. We will feast in celebration as soon as we are in London. You are prisoners of my court, not my dungeons."

Blair felt her hand released abruptly as her husband turned to his father, no doubt anticipating regaling the king with his exploits in France. Blair stood alone in the sand as one by one the 'guests' boarded their transport, and Bekah followed close behind her brother to greet him.

Blair waited until most of the guests had passed by, and then walked as if towards her carriage. She paused by Chuck Bass, and pressed beside him. She warned him in a low voice, "I suggest, sir, that you turn away in my presence. Has no one taught you it is rude to stare so uninhibitedly, and to do it to your queen begs for a beheading?"

Within that instant Blair regretted approaching him, for when he turned to her she thought she saw the sea boiling in that dark stare. He told her, "If I should avert my eyes, my lady, it is because your beauty is blinding." And even as he heightened her hear, Blair grew breathless with the stirring inside her, deep and pooling, there where even her husband had not known her. He continued, "And lest you forget, princess, you are not my queen." Blair sucked in her breath, knowing not whether to take offense at the slight however true it was. Before she could utter her retort, he continued, "My lady Blair, I shall ensure to bow deeply to you as I feast."

~~

It was the night of the feast, and the whole of Windsor was aflutter to receive their guests. Klaus had sent for her a red brocade gown fitted at the waist and fell thickly around her hips with its long, full body. Its flaring sleeves were interwoven with gold and yellow, and Blair stood in front of the mirror as Dorota braided her hair, then pinned in its braids small, fine jewels that were brought by her husband's squire.

"A show of wealth once more," Blair commented to Dorota, as her hair glittered with the precious stones embedded in it. "I feel as if a cushion from the cathedral, holding up the King of England's crown for all the world to adore."

She had not noticed Bekah, her dear sister and friend, opening the door to her chambers. Bekah said in reply, "You and I are far too learned to be surprised that father wishes to flaunt his wealth. We are in the middle of his campaign for France, Blair. Wealth is power, attractive to fealty from his barons."

Blair nodded, "And we are in need of as much support as we can get to wage this war on France."

"Aye," Bekah agreed. She walked over to Blair and took her hand. "The king will stop at nothing to gain support for his war. He is God's choice to rule over England and France."

Blair stood in front of the mirror and suddenly raised her wrist and glanced down, noticed it was bare. It could have been the perfect companion piece to the display that she was to become that night. "Chuck Bass," she whispered. The last she had seen, her jewels hung from his fingers.

"Is something the matter, Blair?" Bekah inquired.

Blair shook her head. To breathe a word of it might rattle the unsteady court, and find Chuck Bass hanging from the Tower Green in the morrow. "Nothing, sister. I am wary of the time, and that the king shall be displeased with our tardy arrival."

"Well then," Bekah said with a smile, warming Blair's heart, with its genuine welcome, "shall we go? Your husband, my brother, stands with father and is loathe to be away from you." She was kind, Blair thought. Blair had no doubt that Klaus had spared a thought to her save to ensure she arrives a royal sight. Bekah turned to address Dorota, "Surely she can be no prettier than she is now."

On the way to the feast, Bekah drew her to the side of the corridor and looked to either direction. When she was certain they were unobserved, Bekah's eyes lit with the familiar sparkle of a child's. At the sight, Blair lightened and was drawn by her friend's excitement. "What is it, Bekah?"

Bekah held up her finger to her lips. "Hush." And then with a lowered voice, she shared, "I shared a kiss, Blair, just now outside by the stables."

"Tell me it is no horse!" Blair teased.

"Not a horse," answered Bekah. And then she grinned, bit her lip, and said, "But from what I hear he is most certainly a stallion!"

"Bekah!" Blair admonished.

"Oh hush, Blair. Not all of us have been an old married lady, at eighteen, with years of love from her own prince."

Blair shook her head. "Was a prince kissing you at the stables, being gossiped for his girth?" she demanded from her friend.

"But I am not in love," Bekah assured her. "He needed not be a prince, but a man to have fun as I go riding out in king's forest hunting for game." And then Bekah giggled. "Or being hunted. I am a ripe age, Blair. A broken engagement once with my father's choice, and I am left husbandless near eighteen."

"Unmarried at eighteen. What scandal!" Blair took her friend's hand and pulled towards the dining hall. "It is a feast in your father's court. Keep away from the prisoners on display, and set your sights on a noble, sister. You are a beauty. For certain at least a score of men will be eager to take you to wife."

Bekah broke into a grin, then reached up behind her head to pull a pin loose, allowing a large portion of her hair to tumble free. How wonderful it must be, to have no cares in the world, to live life the way you desired. Who knew that Bekah's terminated marriage arrangement would be the best thing to happpen to her?

The moment she arrived, she knew immediately by sheer sensation where it was that Chuck Bass stood. Blair held her breath and ignored the pull that he had on her, refused to turn her head and meet his gaze. She walked to the throne and curtsied deep before the king.

My lady Blair, I shall ensure to bow deeply to you as I feast.

Her back stiffened, but Blair held the curtsy until she heard Mikael acknowledge her. Her husband did not stand beside his father. She could hear the noise around her die down, and her ears sharpened to pick up the murmurs regarding her appearance. Just as Mikael and Klaus had intended, the nobles spoke of the wealth that clung to her like they spoke of a kill in a hunt. A year away, and the sheer impact of all those eyes on her became much too much to bear. She walked unsteadily towards the wide arch that led to the shadows, barely hidden with the winking gems in her hair and gown.

When she turned back to the celebration, Blair found herself before Chuck Bass. True to his promise, he bowed deeply before her, his head so close to her body she could reach out and touch his dark hair if she chose. When he rose, Charles extended a hand and offered back to her the diamond bracelet she had dropped on the ship. It was the on treasure that did not burn with the cog, and she reached out a trembling hand to take it.

When her fingers touched his palm, she drew her breath sharply in. Their eyes met. The noise around her, the murmurs, even the music silenced. All that there was ringing in her ears was his breath, her heartbeat, and then his quiet offer.

"My lady, I can help you with its clasp."

And have him so close she could inhale his scent, so intimate his skin was on her wrist, close to her racing pulse? "There is no need."

He held out his hand. "A dance, princess, with a humble hostage?"

"Would be inappropriate," she said to continue his question into a statement, "as I am a married woman."

Chuck turned towards the celebration. "Yet the prince is free to do as he wishes with his prisoner, my lady?"

Blair stepped forward and witnessed her husband spin across the floor with the girl from Calais, laughing heartily the way she had not seen him laugh before. The girl was wrapped in a bright blue dress, one she recognized from his mother's wardrobe, with her golden hair piled atop of her head and pinned with a few choice diamonds, far fewer than hers, but recognizable to anyone in the hall.

Royal jewels. Certainly not anything that anyone from Calais had brought across the channel.

At this, she turned on her heel and walked away. At her heels, Chuck Bass followed. "My lady," he called to her. Shamelessly. Without filters. "You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen." To her stinging heart, it was a boon. To her flaming cheeks, it ignited even more embarrassment. This... this commoner... this man... this hostage...

This nothing.

Only this noone could say those words and look at her in that way. While the fate of a race rested on her, she could barely keep her husband's attention from wavering.

Blair stalked away, then nodded for the guards to step aside and allow her through to the corridor leading to the chapel. When he moved to follow, the guards blocked his way.

"My lady," he called to her again. Blair kept the distance between them, but turned to look back towards him. "Every part of you calls to me; every time I look at you, or hear you, or sense you, my entire body thrums." Blair felt a knot form in her throat. There was in his eyes that maelstrom that she had seen once before as he looked at her. "You are so beautiful, enough to take my mind away from it all."

Blair slowly took a step back towards him, even as they were separated by the guards. "Leave us," she commanded, and the guards retreated only far enough to give them privacy. "Enough, Chuck Bass, that you can forget that you are a prisoner? Underneath all this pretense of a celebration, of freedom to walk about in the Tower grounds, you are my husband's prisoner."

"I can forget it all," he assured her. "You make me want to forget it all."

"You are asking for the noose."

His jaw tightened. "I am not afraid of dying." And there was so much truth in the sound of his voice, in the firmness of his conviction, that of a sudden she was so painfully sad.

"What a dreary life you must have, Chuck Bass, that you should feel no fear of dying." The longer she was unsuccessful, the longer she waited, the more the Black Prince ravaged the lands of a people who could keep a race alive. "So many wish to live, and yet you are so prepared to give up this world for nothing."

"You treasure this world?"

It struck her as most odd, yet the words plucked at her heartstrings and she reached for his hand and squeezed it between hers. "If you live long enough," she promised him, "perhaps I shall teach you how to love life. And then it shall matter to you whether you live or die." And then her lips curved, "And when you have fear in your heart, you would not dare the Black Prince so, for one little dance."

"Blair."

Blair dropped Chuck's hand and looked up to see her husband standing at the corridor. Just as he did at the beach, Klaus raised a hand towards her. For a split second her heart rebelled at the gesture, and then Blair stepped past Chuck Bass and walked towards Klaus, resting her hand in his. Klaus placed her hand on his sleeve. "The king has asked for our presence."

"Of course," she murmured. Blair fell into step with Klaus, and did not dare look back.

"It would be best if I knew where you are, Blair," he told her as they walked back to the hall, "so I need not scour the palace for you."

Blair did not look up at Klaus. She looked directly in front of her, preparing herself to be thrust back into the hall, paraded and displayed as evidence of French conquest. "In the future I expect that you shall not flaunt your obsession with the girl from Calais."

"Caroline," he corrected her.

She continued as if uninterrupted, "Not to flaunt your obsession with Caroline--for all to see."

Klaus gave a heavy sigh. "She is a prisoner. I see not why you take exception, my lady."

"I am not some fool, Klaus. You are humiliating me." They emerged from the doorway to the hall, and Blair gave the guests her brightest smile. "I am your wife."

"You are my wife." Klaus nodded towards the court of her father. He escorted his wife to face the king once again. "And through me you are princess of Wales and Aquitaine."

It was not as if she had ever expressed interest in his titles, yet for a man with Klaus' obsession, there was no reasoning on desire and lack thereof. She stood before Mikael, and remembered distinctly the similar occasion when she was a child and presented as bride in much the same way. Then she had no choice. She had been a sacrifice to pacify the marauder, to leave her home intact, to bribe him with his innermost desire.

Mikael nodded to his son and his wife, and declared to the court the fall of Calais. "It was a battle hard won, but we hold the port of Calais now with my sons Elijah and Finn keeping it secure." The court cheered, saved for the hostages who were there to hear it. "I have little more to give to the son who is heir to the throne. But as I am yet hale and hearty, I hereby grant you the Duchy of Cornwall. Before you, my lords and ladies, stand the duke and duchess of Cornwall."

Blair kissed the hand of the king as her husband bowed down in respectful gratitude. Klaus turned to her, and made a show of kissing her cheek. "Shall I offer my neck to you now, my lord? It seems you have no need of my blood and wealth to bolster you."

"Tempt me not, Blair," he warned in a whisper straight to her ear. "I am kind to you, because you were given to me an innocent child. Yet push me more and you shall see--I am the Black Prince for a reason."

Klaus picked up his wine and called the attention of the court. "With gratitude I accept the duchy of Cornwall, and the fealty of the lords within. Yet I shall be remiss not to acknowledge the true gift my father had given me, when he arranged for my wedding to my dearest bride."

Blair looked towards Klaus, kept the smile on her lips.

"To my bride who remained by my side this length of the siege. Many a lady would have remained by the hearth, but not my lady. A king can ask for no better queen than one who joins him in his battles," he said aloud so all may hear. Blair wondered how many more he would lull into investing life and wealth into Klaus' wars. She had no doubt, with the way her husband raised her upon a pedestal, he would fool many a French lord. "To the lovely princess Blair, dearest to my heart, I grant to you fully Castle Mere--"

Blair's brows furrowed.

"--the castle in the clouds you had longed for as a child, in the folk lore that you had so adored. Castle Mere, atop the hill, overlooking all the land, is yours, my lady. There you can see Wiltshire atop the clouds."

Your castle in the clouds. The dark prince will destroy your castle in the clouds.

Blair closed her eyes. She remembered then the role she played, and the beauty on display. She opened her eyes and smiled, then allowed her husband to take her hand and kiss her ring. Her gaze wandered towards the court and searched, not finding Chuck Bass.

She could see Caroline up in front, with that smile on her face as she observed, a smile that did not reach her eyes. And Blair pitied the girl, that hostage from Calais, who did not ask for the siege or to be taken away from home, the girl who only found herself on the receiving end of her own husband's attention, who was too young to resist the temptation of a prince.

When Blair caught Caroline's gaze, Caroline dropped her eyes and looked down at her hands.

"And of course," Mikael continued, "I wish to let you know that Castile will fight by our side in our subsequent battles, as my daughter Rebekah is now promised to the son of Castile. Rebekah leaves with her retinue by sunrise, bearing an important letter from England to Castile. May life be happy and prosperous, my Rebekah."

Blair watched as Rebekah's lips parted in shock at the news of her engagement. Bekah stepped forward, eyes full and liquid. And then, as she composed herself, Bekah took a deep breath and bit her lip, then nodded in acceptance.

tbc

 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Part 5**

Caroline woke up bright and early after the feast, eager and exhilarated still by the very first event of the like that she had attended. She could not wait to speak with Bonnie about the night. Caroline was certain Bonnie had ot been in the audience of monarchy, despite their parents being burghers in Calais. Certainly, this was the biggest and the grandest affair Caroline had seen in her life.

At the purposeful know on the door, Caroline rushed towards it, running her fingers down her hair to straighten it. Apparently, Caroline thought to herself, Bonnie could not help herself and was as eager to share. Briefly, with her hand on the latch, Caroline felt a sharp pang in her heart that her mother was not here to share it with her. She truly hoped that peace and nourishment had returned to Calais now that the Black Prince was back in his home.

Caroline pulled open the door with a bright smile on her face to greet her friend, only to have it fall at the sight of a stranger, a younger boy. The boy had looked both anxious and keen, and his lips curved into a frown at the sight of Caroline's shoulders slumping. "Good morrow, mademoiselle." He raised a tray with a slice of pie and offered it to her.

"Thank you, lad," Caroline responded. Her stomach growled and she remembered she had not much food, so very roused she had been the night before, with the prince having asked her dance. "Are you come for the dress and the jewels?" she asked. They were far too grand, and Caroline was certain they were Lady Blair's clothing she wore that night.

Caroline took the pie and bit on the cold meat, chewed shamelessly before the boy.

Truly she had thought that the prince had sent them all wardrobe for the feast, knowing that they had no other possessions from Calais, but as they emerged from their quarters she noticed that she was the only one dressed up so. She could not even respond to questions about the gems.

That night Chuck Bass observed her so closely, and sidled to her very briefly and said, "Much too quickly, Miss Forbes, to catch a murderer's eye."

And Caroline bit her tongue, if only because she could not have her only true friend in England overhear. And Bonnie would fume. Bonnie had cursed the Black Prince most days of the siege and the sea voyage.

"Nay, mademoiselle. There is a woman who shall come to take my lady's jewels back to the Wardrobe, and the dress you may keep." The flush on the boy's cheeks deepened. "It is yours, mademoiselle."

"Is this what the prince has said?" Caroline pressed. The blue gown was the finest she ever owned. It was hard to fathom.

"The princess told my lord, mademoiselle. She cannot take back the dress."

Caroline swallowed at the thought, wondering how it was that the Lady Blair communicated such. She shook her head, taking pity on the boy. "What be your name, lad?"

And then the boy straightened. He puffed up his chest and declared, "Eric, mademoiselle, my lord Klaus' page, son of Lord William and Lady Lilian van der Woodsen. My sister hopes to be a lady in the princess' service. She had served with Lady Rebekah before she married, and now she is widowed she wishes to join Lady Blair." He took a breath. "I truly hope you will let the prince know what marvelous job I shall do for you, mademoiselle."

"I'm sorry," Caroline interrupted. "Why are you here again, Eric?"

"My lord Prince Klaus has sent me to take you to his private gallery, Miss Forbes. He said to tell you that your journey to see a world of art and beauty begins today."

"And the prince?" Caroline prompted.

"Shall join us the first moment that he can."

Caroline's brows furrowed. She was drawn towards the grilled windows of her quarters. Caroline walked towards the windows and scanned the grounds, her gaze resting on the direction of the chapel where Klaus stood at the entrance with a hand on the small of the princess' back. Klaus leaned close to his wife, whispering into Lady Blair's ear. Slowly, almost reluctantly but it could not be, the princess sidled towards her husband. Caroline turned and saw two holy men allowed into the gates.

"Who are they?"

Eric walked towards the windows and said, "Ambassadors from the Vatican, mademoiselle, come to see the conditions of the French prisoners. They had been on their way back to Rome when they learned that the prince had arrived with hostages."

"Shall we not prepare for their visit to the quarters, then?"

Eric gestured out towards the corridors. "They shall take Mass with all the prisoner this sundown, mademoiselle. No doubt the king shall send for you. This morning they have asked for a private audience with the princess."

And so the prince could just as easily slip away from the guests, with the princess meeting with them. Caroline wondered if the page spoke so openly for that feedback he had requested to be given to the prince. For Caroline, it was different to be given such unfettered responses.

"And the king allows the princess to have such an important audience?" she questioned, falling into stepp beside the page as they made their way up the staircase and down a long corridor.

"The princess has lineage to most houses in France, giving the prince a claim to the empire, mademoiselle. It is a pleasure to watch her handle affairs of the kingdom. My sister has told me when she informed us she wished to serve in Lady Blair's court, that the most powerful weapon in His Grace's kingdoms hangs not in the armory but lies in the prince's bed."

"High compliments coming from a page," Caroline murmured.

His chest puffed when he claimed, "Mark my words, mademoiselle. Prince Klaus will take back the empire once more, lost by the old king his grandfather, God rest his soul. It would be near impossible without the princess to legitimize his claim."

They stopped before a solid wood double door, and Eric pushed them open to reveal the dark chambers of the gallery. Caroline could barely see figures before her. She took a tentative step inside. Eric rushed towards the walls and pushed open the heavy curtains and allowed the light to flood in.

Caroline's lips parted as she looked around the largest expanse of the room she had ever been in, the walls heavy with the hanging landscapes and portraits. She wandered in the gallery, looking at the work around her. There was a painting of the walls of Calais, daunting and towering, the moon over the city glowing in the sky and in the water. Standing before it Caroline could even hear the crashing waves, could breathe the salty sea mist as it battered into her home.

The white cliffs of Dover, familiar to her now after their voyage, were breathtaking in the painting. What a shame that these pieces were hidden so, not even displayed as marvelously as the wealth in Windsor were exhibited for all to marvel at the palace. One in particular caught her attention, and she walked slowly towards it hanging near the very hidden corner, close to the shadows.

Never had she ever seen such a portrait, such far cry as it was from the portraits of stiffly posed monarchs with their regal carriage and prim lips. The portrait was that of a child, viewed from above, her pale face looking up, dark liqid shining eyes swimming with a beaded tear threating to spill, froze there in the corner of her eye for eternity, as if trembling, as if suspended. Her full red lips were half parted and the curling dark hair in wisps around her cherub face.

A sacrifice.

"Who is this?" Caroline asked aloud, not needing an answer.

Her voice echoed in the gallery, and she turned around to realize that Eric had already left her. She turned towards the open doorway and saw his figure standing there.

"I'm sorry that the jewels needed to be taken back to the wardrobe, Caroline. It would have been magnificent if you could keep them."

Caroline shrugged. "What need have I of gems as a hostage in your tower?"

"They were not mine to give. They were from the royal wardrobe, property of every queen that sits on the throne, owned by not one person." The prince stepped into the large gallery and his presence so loomed that Caroline felt the room become much smaller. "But I have brought for you something I can freely give."

He drew a bracelet, winking with diamonds, and clasped it around her wrist. His thumb rested on her pulse point, and Caroline held her breath. She held up her wrist to the sunlight and gasped at the sheer brilliance she wore. She started to refuse, but Klaus gave her a small smile and assured her, "It once belonged to a princess almost as beautiful as you."

For a minute, if she allowed herself, she could release her doubts and just let herself believe. She shook her head. "Why is all this beauty hidden?" she asked, moving the discussion to the art.

"Because of who I am," he said matter-of-factly. "All this cannot come from Black Prince's hand. A bloody sword, a shattered shield, a slick lance--but not all this."

Her gaze widened. She looked around her and whispered, "This is your work?"

Klaus stepped closer to her. "With a little more time, I will know youself so well I can close my eyes and put your face on canvas."

This could not be, she thought. This was the Black Prince, and they buried people and cast away elders and the sick because he was blackhearted. But when he stood so close, looked at her that way, treated her like such, she was was close to forgetting.

But horror like the one that he had dispensed could not be forgotten. Only one who thought of no one but herself would ever forget.

"Your grace, I need to go home." He frowned, seemingly surprised at the turn of the conversation. "My father is sickly. He had been since the beginning of the siege. My mother is alone to care for him."

"You are being held for ransom," he clarified, as if he needed to.

"There is no ranson to be had from my family," Caroline said slowly. "I am heiress to no wealth."

His lips thinned. "I cannot go back on my word."

As if a supplicant, she pleaded, "My father needs me."

"I need you," his voice gentled. And then he cleared his throat. "I need all of you to ensure that France knows I am the superior power. They will find your ransom. We have done this many times before. Your king will raise the ransom for you all, or suffer the ridicule of the neighboring kingdoms and admit that they must surrender to me, or lose their cities."

Caroline wet her lips. "My parents--"

"Consider it taken care of."

Fearfully, she asked, "What will you do?"

"My brother rules Calais in my place. I shall ensure they have enough to survive." She could feel his eyes searching her face. "Elijah will send for them, and Katerina shall care for them. Personally if I so wish. But you are not leaving. None of you can until I see France down on his knees. Until then, I shall accept your gratitude and call on you whenever I wish."

Her eyes narrowed. "I know the man you are," she surmised. "You cannot want for anything, and you are a child that everything must be yours at the snap of your fingers!"

His voice lowered, and he stared at her in disbelief. "You know not who I am."

"That is why we are here, is it not? You want our king to tremble before you, and so you laid a bloody siege on my city until we fell. You want gold, and so you capture us and keep us hostage until gold is delivered to you." She paused, knowing if what she had already said was not enough to get her struck down, the next would. "You are lonely, so you pretend that this," she gestures around her, "is for me." Caroline sighed. "Why are you wasting your time on me, my lord?" Her gaze wandered back to the portrait of the child. "You have a lovely wife--strong and able, perfect for you--"

At this the prince cut her short. "I would that we never speak of my wife, Caroline. Accuse me what you will, but we cannot speak of her." He looked towards the direction at which she did, and Caroline knew the moment he found the portrait. Klaus' lips thinned, and he told her curtly, "The chapel at sundown. I will have the guards escort all of you before the Mass."

Klaus stepped out of the gallery and gestured towards the corridor. Stiffly, Caroline gathered herself and left the gallery as well. She jumped with a start as the double doors shut closed behind her. With a shallow bow, the prince left her to find her own way back to her quarters.

~o~o~o~

It was easy to hear about the message from Bass House. The hostages were aflutter with the information. Bartholomew Bass had wasted no time to send a missive assuring the English of his intention to send the ransom.

His weight in gold, Caroline heard. And Charles Bass was barely in England a week before the missive arrived. Caroline suspected how soon it was since they set sail that Bartholomew Bass raised the gold he needed to take his son back.

What good fortune for this man. She hoped he deserved such care and devotion, especially when he had been such passive observer when it was his father that walked towards his death.

Bass House was far wealthier than most of Calais, and this was the favored only son. Caroline approached the strange young man, who truly barely spoke to anyone else save Nathaniel for the fast friendship they had developed at sea.

Charles and Nathaniel both sat on the grass in the chapel grounds, waiting for sundown and the Mass. Caroline knelt before Charles, mindful of grass stains because of the limited change of clothing. She was not going to use the blue gown again, not for a long time. Caroline might even save it for her wedding day.

"Mr Bass," she said. When Charles did not turn, Caroline placed a hand on his knee. "Mr Bass."

Charles' gaze flew to the diamonds on her wrist. Quickly she drew back her hand. "Mr Bass is my father. Call my Chuck." He nodded towards her bracelet. "Lovely." And then he looked up at her face. "How can I help you, Miss Forbes."

"If I shall call you Chuck, please call me Caroline."

"Caroline," he repeated, the name rolling in his tongue. "How may I be of service?"

"You will be ransomed, and soon," she stated. "I need your help, Chuck. My father is ill and I need to be home. There is no wealth to be had."

He cocked his head to the side, and his eyes narrowed. "Tell the prince."

She could not say that she already had, because all the hostages would wonder when she could have had audience with the prince. "He will kill me if he knows," was her answer.

Slowly, he drawled, "How can he kill you, Caroline? The prince is enamored of you." He did not bother to lower his voice, and at those words Nathaniel turned to look at her.

Caroline sucked in her breath. "That is untrue!"

The corner of his lips drew up. Again, his eyes fell to Caroline's bracelet. "The princess dropped that very same jewelry the night you fell ill, Caroline. That came from the prince. It was Lady Blair's."

She threw a sharp look at the diamonds, then quickly removed it from her wrist. Caroline had half a mind to throw it at the prince during Mass, but thought better. Caroline needed some self-preservation if she were to be ransomed to care for her family. She lowered her voice and leaned closer to Chuck. "So you caught me. What do you want in exchange for help with my ransom?"

"I want you to distract the prince."

"How do I distract the Black Prince?" she demanded.

"Your weight in gold," Chuck said slowly. "That is a large amount, Caroline, and I shall figure out how to raise it for you. You can think of your own plan to draw away a man who already adores you. Every day we encounter them, Caroline, until we are freed. I need you to draw him away from the princess."

The bell tolled, and the hostages stood and walked towards the chapel. Caroline felt the eyes upon them all as the representatives from the Vatican seemed to observe them. There was a low murmur and Caroline turned. Her heart ached as she watched the prince and the princess make their way down the aisle, with Klaus not turning towards her once, and onto the front of the church. Her hold tightened around the bracelet until her skin close to tore with the bite of the diamonds.

Caroline glanced briefly towards Chuck Bass, whose jaw was tightly set as he waited. When the sacramental bread and wine was called, Chuck's lips thinned. Caroline looked before her and watched as the prince held to Lady Blair, walking with her to receive the eucharist, then walking her back to the pew. Caroline covered her surprise when all of a sudden Chuck turned towards her. She nodded in understanding.

As the Mass ended, Caroline walked towards the front of the chapel where Klaus stood with their holy men. She noticed Blair still knelt with her head down, unmoving. Caroline walked to the altar and she felt Klaus watching her though he did not move towards her. She left the diamonds there and then turned to walk away.

Quicker and quicker she walked away, and belatedly she realized that it was slowly growing dark. Caroline took the opposite direction from where she knew Chuck waited.

"Caroline!" she heard finally, when they were a sufficient distance away.

She whirled around, and then suddenly the flush and the tears rising in her were too real. "Your wife's," Caroline threw back at him. "Your grace, I cannot receive what is not mine."

"It used to be hers," he corrected. "Not anymore. This is not the only thing that is no longer Blair's, Caroline, that I wish to give you."

Behind Klaus, Caroline could see the princess walking towards the grounds. A moment more or two, she would be out of sight, and it was Chuck's turn to find a way.

"I cannot understand how you think, why you do what you do--"

"Take a chance," he pleaded, and Caroline was certain that Klaus Mikaelson had never pleaded a day in his life. "Talk to me. Get to know me." His smile was unnerving, disarming. She could feel her tight shoulders release. "I dare you."

She saw Chuck follow in the princess' footsteps, until they took a turn and was hidden from Klaus' view even if he turned. Klaus started to turn in the direction she was looking, but Caroline laid a hand on his arm instead. "What do you want to talk about?"

"You," he answered. "Your hopes, your dreams, everything you want in life."

"You know what I want," she answered. "I want to go home."

Klaus shook his head. "No."

"Then tell me about Lady Blair."

"I said no, Caroline."

Caroline released her hold on his arm, then let her hand fall to her side. "Then you are not prepared for me, Klaus. You are not ready for anyone."

tbc


	7. Chapter 7

** Part 6 **

It was still quietness, but all around her she could feel the frantic whispers like the wild flutter of butterflies' wings into her ears. The voices were hushed, staccato, biting. She never could rest her gaze on the grounds, not there, especially not when there were no other voices surrounding her.

It was like they knew her name--the lot of them. Right at the center of the grounds where the solid walls parted her from where she knew her husband and his forefathers took lives away in the guise of protecting the land. Standing before those walls Blair could see faces molten on the stone walls, frozen in a silent scream that she could hear right at the pit of her stomach.

"Your grace."

She turned, and for the first time was surprised to find that strange young man, that man from Calais who insisted on the name Chuck. More times than not she knew when he was near, could feel him around her. To the guards who waited a few steps behind her, Blair nodded, and Chuck Bass walked towards her. In the distance she noticed his gaze, the way his eyes swept down her figure, and for the briefest moment her lips curved. Slightly. Almost unmoving, but she relished in its sweet pleasure.

Not once had her husband looked on in appreciation.

"Monsieur," Blair said in acknowledgement, "Chuck Bass. I trust you have communed with our Lord well today."

"In a Mass arranged for show, your grace?" he asked directly. She glanced at him, uncertain now. It was a brazen comment, jarring. Yet refreshing all the same. "I did in fact commune well where we sat on display." And then quietly, he added, "Yet who am I to speak of being shown? I have not been on a pedestal for the world to stare awestruck at what I bring."

She knew not what it was that Chuck Bass knew, could not ask lest she confirm what he did not. But Chuck Bass had sought her out, and he looked at her the way she had so many times wanted Klaus to look, and he spoke to her as if he wanted to hear her answers. Gingerly she placed a hand on his arm, and allowed him--because she would be queen and he was a mere foreign hostage in her palace grounds--to escort her as they walked.

As they strolled several yeards ahead of her guards, she knew the miracle that was the voices around her falling away, left rattling on the walkway of the grounds.

"Tell me, Chuck Bass, what it is like to live in Calais?" she prompted, eager to converse and drown the whispers she was leaving behind. "I had lived a year outside your city walls, but inside it seems to be an entirely different world."

She was filling the silence, and he respected it, regaling her of a childhood in his home, of a busy marketplace he rarely visited save for the few times his father would take him along as he spoke to public concerns in the town square. It was at this moment when her hold on his arm tightened slightly, and he paused his narrative to turn to her. "Your father," she prompted. "Your voice warmed as you spoke of him."

"Did it?" he returned. When she nodded, he told her, "Bartholomew Bass raised me."

"He was one of the burghers that the prince had spared."

And then he shook his head. His gaze was warm, and he turned to face her. "He was one of the burghers the Black Prince spared at your insistence, princess. I cannot fail to thank you. You are the only reason our fathers and mothers live today."

She closed her eyes, allowing her mind to wash back to the shores of Calais and see quite clearly the sight of the burghers carrying the ropes that would have killed them, heard around her the cries, saw before her the blazing anger that was her husband as they stood center in the crowd. She opened her eyes, and her gaze met his. "It would have been a day blacker than it had been."

"The Black Prince would have murdered good men and women."

"Heaven blessed Calais." She nodded in acknowledgment, perhaps even dismissal. He had expressed his gratitude. Mayhap it would be the only reason he would risk the attention.

And then, in that moment she knew he lost briefly himself, Chuck Bass took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and tipped her face to him. "You did not simply save the lives of our people that day, princess. That day you saved his soul."

And even then Blair's heart sank. "If there is still a soul to save, let your tongue speak for angels." She did not move away, so drawn she was to the closeness of him, to the clear, intense look he had. "I thank God he did not execute your father." Her lips parted, and when her gaze dropped she froze.

One of her guards met her eyes, before looking away.

It took a week before she saw him again. After the Mass, Niklaus stepped forward when called to the side by the girl from Calais. Once more, so easily, Klaus bowed to his father and placed a kiss on Blair's cheek, before leaning in to converse with Caroline. Her husband's hand settled on the small of the girl's back, and Blair noted the ease with which the girl spoke to Niklaus.

She was no fool. Blair had seen women come and go in Niklaus' favor these past ten years. Most women warmed his bed for the power it gave them over the other ladies in court, many did so out of fear of retaliation. Even during the battles and the sieges there was a parade, discreet yet still noticeable, of women whom Niklaus sought instead of her.

No one had held Niklaus in the palm of her hand as much as this girl who was not even noble, whose blood was sullied and impure and thin, who had seen barely a tenth of the world and who had nothing to share. What fascinated Niklaus Blair did not know, but there he was, every day drawn to this girl.

All she could do was walk away, else she stoop to the level with which the girl could meet her.

But she was a princess of two realms, stuck as she may be in one. She was collected and cool, far beyond a place where Niklaus and his indiscretions could shake her. Blair made her way out of the Chapel and towards the small walled garden beyond the arched doorway.

Dorota was taking her time seeking her powder, gone as she had been a fortnight. Blair's hands fisted in her skirt and she sat on the stone bench. The voices that surrounded her were no use, merely agony and restlessness from those trapped, whose lives ended in the tower grounds. There was no powder, no way to open the portal, no way to connect to her ancients.

She could not move forward and her head near burst with her frustration of her limitations and the shame that Niklaus brought on her. She registered the shadow of her guards near the doorway of the Chapel, knew they were there and grateful they were hidden. For mere moments she could pretend her life was her own, and had peace.

It was this very time the week before that Chuck Bass had found her, and to her surprised pleasure the doorway darkened with a silhouette that had now become familiar.

"Your grace, it has not been long since the Mass, and yet I see the darkness in your heart."

Blair's eyes widened. "What darkness?" It could not be that this stranger could know her, know of her, or heard the whispers about her.

"There is a dark cloud over you, your grace, and your heart is heavy," Chuck said. "You are troubled."

At this, Blair's tense shoulders eased.

"May I?" And then he sank into the seat beside her. Blair held her breath. "Tell me. What burdens you?"

His nearness made her throat tighten, as if his body thrummed with energy that sapped her blood away and replaced it with liquid lightning. She was burning, much the same way his gaze used to make her fret. And yet even in that discomfort she found she wished to keep him near. Slowly, Blair distanced herself. "Have you ever seen a queen put to death?" she whispered.

"I have not, Lady Blair," was his gravelly response.

"When I arrived in the palace, rumours abound that the king killed his own wife," she told him, careful not to claim truth to any of it lest she was overheard. "There were times the gossip placed the sword in my husband's hands."

His head turned to her, and his eyebrows furrowed. "And you married him still," he told her. "You must have loved him."

"I married the prince before I knew him," she confessed. "I was eight."

"A child."

She shrugged. Far too many did she know who were married even earlier. Yet there was no one who had heard that their husbands were murderers. "Even now I am comforted by the knowledge that the Mikaelsons cannot hold on to France without me." Blair wet her lips. "Yet Klaus will be such a strong king I wonder how long it would take before he no longer needs me."

And even if she had already drawn away, Chuck reached for her hand. "Why ever would you think that the prince would harm you?"

"Men have done far less for an heir." Her eyes wandered towards the Chapel, back there where she knew Klaus had vanished with Caroline.

His hand around hers tightened. "I confess, I could think of no way a man would dare to lose you after he has had you."

But this was too much, too big, too unbelievable. Her head whirled. This is when she turned to him, and said, "You will gain naught from me, good sir."

"I ask for naught but a favor to remember you by. Soon I shall be back in Calais. There is no struggle on my part to produce the ransom that his grace the king requires of me." Her heart sank, and she was certain it showed in her eyes. Because he stepped forward, leaned close until their faces close to touched. "But I shall know you are ever only across the channel, your grace, and I would remember you by your favor."

Not once had a man looked at her the way he did. It was no surprise his father moved heaven and earth to retrieve him. If he were hers she would have held on to dear life, never to lose him, yet here he was about to abandon her.

"Remember me." She smiled a little, and as it quickly as it visited it faded. "What marvel that should do, Chuck Bass, as I sit in my tower." Blair could not help the tinge of bitterness, so she shook her head. "Then you shall sail home soon, and Bekah, my dearest friend and sister, shall leave for Castile."

"And life moves on," he told her, "as if this never happened."

"Live long," she told him. And Blair fixed her gaze first on the guards behind Chuck. These two men had tailed her since she was a young girl, and Blair turned to them with a plea. The two men stepped back and turned to face each other. She then leaned forward and placed a kiss on his cheek. And to her there was a brief spark, a sharp sting where her lips touched his skin. She sucked in her breath. "Have your father find you a good young woman, and marry. Forget the black part that the English marred on your story. Find a beautiful girl and have beautiful children."

"I did not hide it then, on the cog, and I shall not hide it now, your grace." Softly, almost in a whisper, his breath brushed her cheek. "The beauty of all of Calais pales in comparison to yours."

And just like that, this stranger brought tears to her eyes, made them spill to her cheeks for the first time in forever. With a hitch in her voice, she said, "Then why not tarry?" She found the words spilling from her tongue before she could think to contain them.

At this a hopeful yet small smile curved his lips. "As has the prince, I too have a task at hand, your grace. I fear it is a long and arduous one, but one that binds me nonetheless." He shook his head. "Had I a choice, I would stay and be a prisoner to lengthen the years to see you. Perhaps in a year or two you should believe me when I tell you that my world spun upon the sight of you."

"You flatter me."

"I speak the truth," he cut in. "Very rarely do I do so, but I speak the truth with you."

He brought her hand to his lips, and Blair allowed her tears. He reached up and brushed her tears away with his thumbs. "Tell me what I can do," he prompted her. "Save from staying, your grace, because I will go but I swear you have my fealty."

And this time she did not hide or contain her smile. "I am not your sovereign."

"In all aspects that matter, you always will be, princess." He drew her hand up to his lips and brushed a kiss on her knuckles.

The guard stood at the doorway and cleared his throat, and Blair snatched back her hand and stood. It was mere moments later that Klaus arrived and extended his hand towards Blair. She turned to Chuck and gave a nod of goodbye. "It was lovely to host you, monsieur. I wish you a safe trip home." And then she placed a hand on Klaus', who immediately grasped her fingers.

"Please let your father know that he is a good negotiator, and it was a pleasure to do business with him." Klaus turned to Caroline, who sat at the end of the pew. "Unfortunately, Caroline will stay behind despite the Bass offer."

Blair looked towards Klaus in surprise. "The gold did not come in, your grace?"

"Monsieur Bass had generously included Caroline's gold in the ransom, but I have changed my mind on the terms. Caroline will stay," Klaus dictated, "and will serve in your household. She needs an education, one that a post in your household can provide her."

Despite Blair's feelings about Caroline, the sight of the distraught young woman whose eyes were teary and devastated tugged at her heart. "The Lady Serena has filled the seat, my lord."

"My terms have changed," Klaus repeated.

"You cannot go back on your word."

Klaus' eyes narrowed. "Princess, we have had this talk," he reminded her quietly. "I would that you not challenge me, especially not in front of my men."

She could feel his hand tightening around hers. Still she pressed, "You have the gold; now you need to release her."

And he dropped her hand, then screamed, "You do not tell me what to do!"

Blair jumped, then stepped away from Klaus and bumped onto Chuck. Her fingers laced with his.

Caroline jumped up from her seat and grasped the prince's arm. "Stop it! I shall stay," Caroline said soothingly. Blair saw Klaus' tight jaw working, and the gentle words settle her husband. Caroline was tearful, but she nodded towards Chuck.

Blair swallowed, then softly she asked, "What are your new terms, your grace?"

"I shall give it a thought," Klaus answered. "Once I know them, I will inform you, princess. Now on the matter of Caroline's place in your household."

"Lady Serena--"

"--shall leave for Calais with Bass," Klaus interrupted. "Caroline requires her post, and my brother requires a wife if he is to be a successful leader in Calais."

Blair knew well enough to hold her tongue. She closed her eyes and released a tense breath. Any mention of Katerina would further enrage her husband, and was more than likely why Elijah had accepted the seat in Calais. The Channel between Katerina and Klaus could have kept all happy.

"Blair, I shall wait for you in the hall, to send Bekah off to her new life in Castile." To Caroline, Klaus said, "Be free to send word to your parents of your good fortune, being in the service of the future queen of England and France."

Blair watched as Klaus went on his way, then looked down and realized her fingers were still laced with Chuck's. She took a deep breath, and then tightened her hold. Her lips curved when she felt his hold on her tighten as well.

"Caroline," Chuck started.

Caroline waved what sounded like it was an apology away. "You fulfilled your end of the bargain, Bass. You paid for my ransom in exchange for my leading the prince away. This failure does not reflect on you." Caroline covered her eyes with the palm of her hand. "I need to think-- I want you to tell my mother--"

Blair released Chuck's hand. At the movement, Chuck looked at her askance. "You need privacy," she told them.

She picked up her gown, then entered the Chapel and existed through the entry way. She followed her husband across the grounds and into the great hall. Her husband was halfway down the corridor.

"Your grace!" she called to him. "My lord Klaus!"

Klaus stopped, then pivoted to face her. Blair continued forward until she was but a few steps from her husband. His shoulders were high, his back straight, stoic, in the defensive.

She had seen the stance many, many times. In jousts, in battle, in the throne room facing his father.

"Dismiss the guards," she said quietly.

"They are here for our protection."

Her lips thinned. "You are more than man enough to protect both us, your grace, in the small likelihood we are attacked right inside the palace."

Klaus raised a hand and dismissed both his guards and hers. "What is it?" he asked when the men had left.

"You said you cannot let me challenge you, or question you, or object to you before your men."

"Then say your piece, and let us retire to our chambers briefly and prepare for the feast. Rebekah needs us both to wish her a good journey."

Blair shook her head. Suddenly, she was too tired. She could see his face, and he was exhausted. He was unhappy. He was--dead.

Both of them were.

"Your grace, I thank you for granting me Castle Mere," she told him. "With your permission, my lord husband, after Bekah sails, I wish to retire to Wiltshire and live in the castle on the hill."

And it was the first that she saw a crack on his exterior. He rasped, "How long?"

"I know not, my lord. I believe I wish to leave you," she said, with each word sounding like a revelation, even to her own ears. "Your grace, I want to leave. For my sanity, and for your happiness, please send me to Castle Mere."

His hands fisted on his sides. And then he exhaled, "You are my world, Blair."

She shook her head, and with a soft smile she told him, "I am not your world. I am not your life." He stepped forward, and then another, then another until he was close enough that he could hold both of her hands in his. She continued, "I am here to give you everything you want, but I am not what you desire, Klaus."

"You are everything I could ever hope for in a wife."

He was so sincere, she wondered if he had managed to fool even himself. "Ten years I have been yours, and you have set me aside over and over. I am not your world, I am merely your ambition."

His jaw locked. "I have set you above everyone," he threw back at her.

"Above even you! A decade I have been yours and you cannot touch me."

"How can I think to soil you? You are a child. You were my innocent, Blair. I have killed and I have razed and I have destroyed, but you are the only innocent part of me."

She dropped her gaze to the floor after hearing all her fears from his mouth. She closed her eyes and she could feel the tears squeezed out, her chest hollowed. "I am not a child. I have not been a child for years, Klaus!"

And then his hands were warm over her cheeks, cupping her face. He raised her head and drew her face to him, leaning down to capture her lips. His warm mouth closed over hers, and Blair stood on the tips of her toes as he kissed her. Their lips parted, and he rested his forehead on hers, looking down into her eyes.

"You are all that is good in my life, Blair."

She closed her eyes. She wanted to believe. She wanted it so much. It was the answer to everything. If she was his life, and she was his world, and she made him good, then she could fulfill her destiny. "Then give me a child."

And then he kissed her forehead, rested his chin on the top of her head. And then, the words ripped across her belly when he said, "I can't. Not now. I cannot see you that way, Blair. But I love you."

Blair took a deep breath, then pushed on his chest. She wiped her tears with the back of her hand. "I shall see you when we send off your your sister, Klaus. And then, your grace, I am leaving for Castle Mere at the crack of dawn." She straightened, and ran her hands down her dress, needing to be busy her idle hands, looking for anywhere to rest her eyes but him. "There had not been sufficient time to prepare, so I will leave instructions to send my clothes and jewels." He grabbed her hand, and still refusing to look him in the eye, she closed her other hand over him. "Please. Let your father know and have him give me his blessing. He does not need to know anything else. I shall rest in the countryside. You know where I will be, Klaus."

tbc

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Part 7**

The music was loud, deafening, perhaps even louder than ever before. Blair could not deny that it was probable that she heard it so loudly to drown the chatter in her head. She had known this day would come, but had never truly anticipated the cold emptiness in her heart as she counted down the hours.

Her best friend, her sister, would finally set sail to wed and run her own household.

They had been fortunate. The king and Niklaus had not rushed Rebekah's marriage. Blair had been witness to many offers for Bekah's hand in marriage. But one of those that Blair truly held in esteem was her husband's love for his sister, and Niklaus could not be bought with promises. Truly he desired the best home for his sister, and by the look of the husband that Mikael finally chose for Bekah, Niklaus ensured as well that the man could be someone that Bekah could eventually love.

Guests moved about during the banquet. The trestle tables were laden with gold and silver serving plates, and centered were many large servings of pheasant, veal, stag and rabbit. Every few dishes there were sprays of flowers picked from the royal garden and carted from the countryside. There was an enormous pie, steaming and stuffed with the meats from the kitchen that had fallen off the bones before serving, cooked in the large stone over far away from the hall.

No expense was spared, and the smile of Rebekah's face was wide and open as she watched the servants parade into the banquet one by one bearing more food for the buffet table.

She could see her husband at the high table with the king, saw the empty seat to Klaus' right and knew it was for her. Despite her desire to avoid Klaus that night, there was no option for her but to take that seat. But she did not need to take it until the time they would break bread.

Blair went directly to the rose water bowl, and fished a couple of choice plums. She sidled next to Rebekah and commented, "Sister, I am glad to see you so glad."

From between the drapes hiding the hallway to the kitchens, a tray of a small suckling pig emerged. Rebekah nodded towards it and said, "As I am now leaving, it matters not that you know. Look at such a lovely creature."

Blair turned towards the food and furrowed her brow. "Certainly it would have been a fine animal."

Rebekah managed to laugh, and then she shook her head. "The man from the stables," Rebekah reminded Blair. "Carrying the pig, you see. His name is Donovan."

And just like that, Blair turned from the roasted pig to the face of the man carrying the load. Her immediate reaction was rejection. A stable boy, the kitchen help, a server in the royal banquet. All these things immediately struck her and he could not be of a stature who should hope to touch Rebekah's finger. She was pleasantly surprised to find a pleasant looking young man, whose eyes turned to Rebekah very briefly, and looked down to suppress a grin. Somehow in that split second, Blair was truly envious of Rebekah.

And then Rebekah tugged her arm. "I am quite fond of him. Will you see to him, Blair? See that he is well and has a job in the castle?"

Blair turned to her friend with stricken eyes. The words hung from the tip of her tongue. I am to leave for Castle Mere. Yet the look in her eyes were hopeful, as if her wish were not in vain, as if she truly believed she would yet again encounter this boy. "After I winter in Castle Mere with your brother," Blair assured Rebekah, and it bothered her how very easily the lie came to her, "I shall him out and ensure he has a place in the castle staff."

Rebekah turned to Blair and wrapped her in a tight embrace. Blair closed her eyes and held on, anxious that one day she would forget about the sisterhoood, yet truly hoped that Bekah would find herself in a much happier marriage than her own.

Rebekah pulled away then held out her hand to someone behind Blair. Blair noted above Rebekah's shoulder that Klaus made his way down from the high table and towards the foot of the table. She could see a glimpse of golden hair ineffectively hidden by a wimple. She turned away and saw the Lady Serena, beautiful like the day she first saw her, drop into a curtsy before them.

"Your grace," Serena murmured. When her gaze lifted, Blair could see the tearful frustration in her eyes. "With regret, I must inform you that I can no longer serve in your household."

Blair nodded. "I heard that the king has blessed you with the most wonderful gift, my lady Serena. You may not serve me as a maid, but you shall be our sister."

Rebekah reached for Serena's arm and squeezed. "And we shall begin our adventure together. We shall take the same ship to the continent."

Serena nodded, and drew a deep breath. "I am widowed too soon. I had not been prepared to be married off. Much as I cannot believe my good fortune to land the king's son--"

And Blair knew the reassurance of the man should not come from his own sister, but another. She told Serena, "Elijah is a fine man and will treat you well."

"Will he love me?"

If only she had someone to ask the same, one who had not been her mother, one who would have told her the truth instead of a dream. The moment that Serena asked, Blair remembered the soft dewy morning that Calais fell, and the gentle banter between Elijah and Katerina. Her greatest power, Katerina had always said, was the power every woman had to make her man love her. It was a pity that Katerina's powers could not extend to the king, or to Klaus. And to date after countless year together, Elijah never could wed Katerina.

More so it was a pity that Blair, she herself who was so important to the king and her own husband, who truly had power over elements, never could have the power to make Niklaus truly love her.

So Blair answered Serena as honestly as she could, "He will love you as much as he can."

And people truly always only ever hear what they wished to. Serena broke into a grateful smile and said, "Thank the Lord."

The music picked up, and the chatter intensified as the guests went to their seats. She closed her eyes, a pleased smile gentled her lips. She could feel it again, feel him, knew he had arrived and found her. Blair looked behind her at the far end of the table and nodded towards Chuck Bass who watched her.

"Princesse, your seat grows cold." When she turned around again, it was to her husband offering his arm.

She looked at him, her gaze scanning his expression, looking for any sign of what he was thinking. But Klaus was warm, his eyes inviting, as if the moment in the corridor happened not, or had been so easily forgotten. There was a delight in him that she had not soon before. Blair wondered if his visit to the commoners, to those hostages, turned him into this.

As they made their way to their places at the high table, Klaus shared with her, "The gold that will not pay for Caroline's ransom shall remain in my coffers. Young Bass has instead decided it would pay for the Archibald lad."

"You are quite the negotiator, husband."

He assisted her to her seat, and Blair froze because she could swear that before he straightened he brushed his nose onto her hair.

Klaus broke the bread for her, and handed her the goblet to drink. He served her well at the table, as was his wont. Blair tore a piece of her bread, and when he moved the plate closer to her he brushed his fingers on her wrist. Blair looked up at him in surprise. "Leave not for Avebury, princesse," he said quietly. Klaus leaned forward and told her, "We can mend this."

Her heart thundered in her chest. "Klaus--"

"I can make it better, Blair. I swear it on my mother's grave."

Her heartbeats echoed in her ears, a staccato rhythm. And it was then that she felt a single tear tracking down her face. Softly, she admitted, "I have never been so lonely, Niklaus, not since I came."

To leave Elijah behind, even Kol, in Calais. To know she would lose Rebekah who was the only friend she had known. And never to have Klaus who she would have spent her lifetime.

To have only silence from the other world she had known, when she had lost any way to open her window to the ancients.

And to lose the only man who had ever made her feel a woman.

She was the loneliest, abandoned by all she held dear.

He drew her into his arms, a rare display at the high table, the very first, she realized. Perhaps he would love her now, perhaps she could make him see. Blair held on to his doublet, tight, almost clinging to the promise. The chatter fell into a hush.

When they parted, Blair hurriedly wiped away her tears. Her blurry gaze landed to where Chuck Bass sat, and hoped he knew, wished he could see.

Klaus leaned forward towards his father, and Mikael gestured with his hands as he whispered into his son's ear. And then Mikael threw back his head and let out a guffaw. The king stood from his seat and declared, "Many of you who have been in my court long enough know I have never been the same since the queen left us."

A murmur of acknowledgment swept through the hall. Blair watched Niklaus' face. His expression was blank, stoic.

"With my youngest wedded off, and my son and heir having proven his mettle to the kingdom, I am decided to retire to my estate in Brittany and relinquish my crown." The murmur erupted into chatter. "My time is passed, and England deserves a young and able king."

Klaus' jaw tightened at the words. His hand closed over Blair's. He said quietly, "Listen and remember this moment for the rest of your life, princesse, because today is the day your whole world changes."

"Therefore, I shall relinquish the scepter to my son, your Prince Regent."

The prince rose, his lips curved into a half grin. The banquet guests rose from their seats and bowed or curtsied deeply before him. He leaned down to Blair, and whispered into her ear, "There is no way you will fail your subjects now, Blair, and leave them just as their king does."

Blair stood beside him, and breathed deeply as she took in the sight before her. It was odd what different things you noticed when you least expect to.

That young Donovan appplauded so energetically that other servants eyed him; Lady Serena buried her face in her hands in obvious distress that she would not serve as one of the princess' ladies; Rebekah brushed tears away from her cheeks.

Dorota was back! Dorota waved from the corner of the great hall holding up a velvet pouch.

"My wife, the Princess Regent, is as shrewd and intelligent as any of my father's advisors, and she will take a seat in my council." Blair's eyes widened. "Not only will she sit beside me in court, she will have an equal voice in the council in matters of war and trade."

Blair clasped her trembling hands together and hung her head. A voice. Power. She would be heard and she could speak her mind on the wars that were slowly sending the French under the Black Prince's blade.

He turned to her, and this time his declaration was only to her. The guests could conjecture on the exchange, but the conversation was reserved only for them, so quiet were his words. "You are now the most powerful woman in England, Blair. You fear for your place in this court, without a son. But you have me. You have the regent of England, and you are the regent's wife." He took her hand in his. "Will you stay now? Will you stay by my side and fulfill what our wedding promised to England?"

She licked her lips. "You think to hold me here."

"I think to give you all that you require." He assisted her to take her seat.

"You want France," she said as Klaus took his own seat.

"I never denied that. We spent years of our lives in battle, Blair, in sieges. I want France, and that is why you were sent to me."

"I was sent to you so you would stop pillaging in Anjou," she reminded him.

"And you came with your direct descent from the throne of France. Any weaker bloodline and this marriage would not have occured."

She had no romantic notions. Since birth she had been reared to know her reason for existence. From her mother's world she needed to keep her people safe from the English, and from her lost father's she stumbled upon the whispers that they not be forgotten.

"The girl from Calais," she said.

"What of her?"

"Send her home."

"One at a time, princesse," he answered.

As the banquet ended, Blair rose and swore to Rebekah that she would see her off. The moment that Blair stepped off the dais, her ladies gathered behind her. Blair noticed that Caroline abruptly stood from her seat, prompted most likely, and joined the rest of her ladies.

Inside her chambers, Blair waved goodnight to everyone but asked Caroline to remain. The blonde stood quietly at the center of her parlor. Blair cocked her head to the side, then looked at the girl from head to toe.

"You are right," Blair said softly.

"Beg your pardon, your grace?"

"You should," Blair said wryly. She shrugged, then presented her back to Caroline. "Any time you are ready, my dear."

Caroline jumped on her feet and fumbled with the laces to the corset, struggling to release the princess.

"This is the indignity and incompetence I shall suffer through?" Blair looked up in the mirror and saw the girl flush red with frustration and anger as she tried and failed her duties as a lady in waiting. "You are right. No other prisoner shared my husband's bed on that ship. In fact, Caroline, from what I have found, the rest of the hostages had far more self respect than what you have shown."

Caroline jerked the lace hard, and Blair grunted at the pain. "I apologize, your grace, for my incompetence," Caroline bit out.

Blair's lips thinned. "Go and call another of my ladies. Any one of them will do a far better job than you."

When Caroline stiffly walked towards the door, Blair turned and called to her, "What is your secret, Caroline, that my husband is so taken with you?"

Caroline shook her head. "Nothing, your grace. Your husband--"

Blair waved away the response. "Go on," she urged. "I know you did not entice him. It is but my ill feelings for my own life that I disparage so. For that you must forgive me."

"Even now a command, your grace,' Caroline said lightly.

But Blair did not return the humor. "Klaus feels what he feels, does what he does, speaks what he speaks. There is no ruling a man born to rule."

It was then that Caroline stepped forward and shared, "Your husband terrifies me."

"He should." Caroline turned her face away, and Blair frowned and stepped forward. "Come close." Caroline reluctantly stepped forward to face the princess. Blair tipped the girl's chin so she could look at Caroline. "Look at me." When Caroline did, Blair released a sigh. "Are you truly afraid of him?"

"Your soldiers laid siege to our city just as we were planning our lives. I assure you, your grace, none of my dreams involved meeting your husband and enticing him at all!" She must have realized she had raised her voice, because she apologized immediately after that.

"Do not apologize. I appreciate the fervor of your denial." Blair released Caroline's chin. "Tell me, Caroline, are you truly afraid of him, or are you afraid of what you feel about him?"

Blair had seen the terror in this girl's eyes. They were a similar fear as that she glimpsed in the mirror of the church the first time she sat for what seemed like hours, talking to Chuck Bass.

Caroline swallowed. She admitted in a whisper, "It is a sin to feel this way about our enemy, and your husband." She laid her palms on her belly, as if expending her energy in calming a raging storm. "I did not seek to have a man, married to another, destroy all that I know and keep me against my will, away from all that I hold dear."

Blair walked over to her dresser and took a small vial of liquid, then went back to Caroline. She pressed the vial into the girl's hands and told her, "There is no prayer strong enough to save you from your hell, dear Caroline. I would that you not lay a hand on my husband. Use this for a restful sleep."

Caroline tightened her grip on the vial. "You mean to lull me to eternal sleep, your grace."

And then genuine surprise lit Blair's eyes. She blinked in disbelief, then burst into a fit of giggles. "It is a bit of lavender, to ease your thoughts and invite a peaceful sleep." Blair waved her off. "Now please ask one of the ladies to help me out of this gown now."

Caroline retreated to the adjoining chambers of the ladies in waiting. After sending one of the ladies into the princess' chambers, Caroline lay down on the soft pallet that was her bed. She yawned, feeling the tension of the day ease as she stretched. She was in her princess' service that night, no matter that she needed to seek help from another lady. She needed to be light in her sleep, so she held onto the vial of lavender tightly but kept her eyes open.

The lady she had sought help from returned to the shared chambers and settled down in bed. Caroline sat up on the bed and looked around at the ladies soundly asleep. She put on a large robe and padded out of the chambers. In the darkness lit only by what moonlight streamed into the chambers, Caroline felt her way towards the door and pushed it open.

Only to find herself out the French doors and onto dew-stained grass, tripping over her own feet and landing on her bottom. Her simple headdress fell off and her blonde hair tumbled down her shoulders. She groaned.

"So here you are finally falling at my feet."

Caroline looked up, her face growing beet red of embarrassment. The Black Prince's eyes were shining, and he smiled so warmly at her. Her pulse raced at the sight, because she knew even at his wife he did not smile so warmly.

She watched them closely enough that night.

And then she felt hot, stinging, burning sensation on her palm. She snatched up her hand and raised it, gripping her wrist steady so that her hurting hand would not be jarred. The pain was so bad she wished to curse, but she was a lady-in-waiting now, not a commoner from Calais.

"Aaaaaahhhhh!" she gasped at the sight of her bloody hand.

When she stumbled she landed on her bottom with her hands hitting the ground palm-first. Unfortunately she had still been gripping the vial. Even asleep, the princess could cause her such pain as she imagined certain thoughts about the prince.

The prince sat on his haunches before her, then gingerly took her hand in his. He made a clucking sound over the torn flesh, then proceeded in pulling her to her feet and towards a small garden pond. The prince dipped her hand in the water, and as soon as the blood washed away, some seeped out of the cut again.

He held her gaze as he raised her hand to his lips, and the warmth of his mouth on the cut sent liquid fire streaming to the apex of her thighs. When he raised his face she could see the her blood glistening on his lip. Caroline reached forward and started to wipe it away with her thumb. Only to have him turn his head slightly and capture her finger between his lips.

And she prayed to every deity she knew under her breath.

She drew such deep breath her breasts almost spilled out of her dress. "Your grace."

"You should be careful, Caroline," he advised. "I am not always around to heal you."

And then his tongue very quickly swept across his lip. There was something that stirred in her when the act swept a bit of her blood into his mouth.

The Black Prince strode back and through the doorway leading back towards the royal chambers. Caroline followed close behind him. She paused at the parlor, and Klaus nodded towards her before entering the door towards the princess' privy chambers. Caroline turned to the next door to the shared bedchambers, walking silently towards her bed. She lay in bed unmoving, eyes wide open, clutching her injured hand to her chest.

tbc


	9. Chapter 9

**Part 8**

Nathaniel Archibald glowed under the moonlight as he stood, proud and straight and magnificent, much like he would have stood had he been in front of his army, as beautiful as he had been when Bonnie saw him for the first time standing on the rocks outside the city walls. Swift and precise and immortal, and he had taken her breath away. He was supposed to blend in with the rest of the world, suited for the shadows and common as the earth.

What ludicrous assumption with the form that he had taken. Surely the ancients in the Otherworld presumed much to have sent a golden god to mingle, to be taken as another one of the myriad mortals who walked this side.

Tonight in the cold darkness of the night, she was breathless once more.

"Will you be safe?" he asked her. In a foreign land where she was a prisoner, it was quite odd to answer. But she knew what was foremost in his mind. Even with the most powerful of the druidic blood running in her veins, to the protector she was a mere instrument in his grander charge, so Bonnie nodded briskly. As she breathed the clouds of smoke formed in the air before her mouth perfectly captured the numbing cold. Yet there was none from him and she could swear the closer he stepped the warmer was her world. "Keep to yourself, just as you have. You have done well until to very day."

And then the smallest of smiles curved her lips. "You warm my heart to so recognize."

"Certainly," he told her. "You have delivered, Bonnie. I would that you are not discovered when I leave."

Her brows furrowed. "Chuck Bass is your charge, not I." She stepped forward, eager for the bit of warmth his nearness could provide. "You are his companion. I am no one."

"No one but the fruit of generations of power. No other mortal can compare." Nathaniel met her with another step, and brushed her cheek with his fingers. Then she closed her eyes to relish the touch, so he cupped her cheek and said, "There is another favor I shall ask."

"Anything," she replied, looking up at him now enraptured.

He leaned before her and whispered into her ear, "I need a storm, stronger than before, relentless and powerful it will rip the sails and shatter the cog."

His jaw was set, his expression grim. She knew well enough never to ask. Even as she feared their voyage to England and the raging winds that she herself conjured, not once had Bonnie demanded answers that Nathaniel did not offer.

"A storm." Nathaniel repeated, and his voice was firm and certain that Bonnie nodded in assent.

The surroundings lit as if the moon had burst in the sky, and the broken crescent brightness hung above only them. The light was enough that Nathaniel turned on his heel and fell onto one knee, his head lowered, his gaze falling to the ground. Bonnie looked up to the figure behind him.

Such was the light that burst through the gloom.

She trembled at the sight, so seldom did he show himself in his true form, in the fluorish of the illuminate far brighter than the blinding spectacle that was Nathaniel Archibald. "Chuck," Bonnie whispered. Before her Nathaniel was unmoving.

"The storm, Bonnie," he said to her. "Shall I trust you, bandraoi?"

Bonnie nodded. "I keep faith with you." And then gingerly, as she had learned many years ago when she had been called to serve him, Bonnie lowered herself to her knees behind Nathaniel. Though not sidhe-born, Bonnie knelt before this young man who showed him the world was more than what her eyes beheld, who allowed her sight between two worlds, who saved her as she teetered at the edge of nothingness and turned her into an anchor of both worlds.

Never had a daughter of the moon, despite the generations linked to the priestesses of old, had such privilege as that which Chuck Bass had bestowed upon her.

"Rise and serve your true prince," he stated.

In silence, without hesitation, Bonnie stood and lifted up and out her arms in invocation, presenting the whole of her body with no reservation. She raised her face to the starry skies.

Chuck Bass strode forward, purposeful, without stopping he walked past Nathaniel still in his supplicant pose on the ground. The sidhe prince melded into Bonnie, walked into the witch and portal guardian. Bonnie sucked in her breath and staggered on her feet. Below her Nathaniel Archibald finally looked up and then stood before her.

"He is in the Otherworld," Bonnie said to him.

"To commune with his father the king of the fae in the mirror world." Nathaniel held out his arm, and Bonnie took the support to walk towards a seat as they waited. The prince could be in the Otherworld for an hour or a day or a week, but knowing that the doomed journey was on the morrow Bonnie knew that Chuck Bass would emerge in moments.

~o~o~

It was to the silver paved floor of his king father's grand hall that Chuck Bass emerged, and his stride was purposeful. With no hesitation in his step, and a resolve behind his step born only to that of a prince, Chuck Bass walked past the guardians lining the path to the throne. They were as golden and lean as his own Nathaniel, knew well enough that his father selected of all of them to accompany his son in the mortal world his truest and most tested.

The guardians upon the sight of Chuck, prince of the dark tribe, fell to a knee and lowered their heads in the same vein as Nathaniel. As he passed one by one they rose to assume their place to safeguard their king.

The fae king rose, and then gestured towards his son. He extended an arm which Chuck Bass took. The king pulled his son forward. So closely Chuck Bass saw the stray gray hair that peppered the king's dark hair. The sign of aging was the sign of death. The slow march had begun, one triggered only by the lessening power he held over the Otherworld.

"You have not succeeded," the king concluded.

Chuck turned to the hall, to the many figures that looked back at him. To the right of the king in their heavy mantles stood their own tribe, stalwart and loyal, who would stay with the king til their world crumbled. To the left of the hall, Chuck eyed the elders of the light.

"Still they shall not swear fealty to us, my son, as long as they hold out hope that the halfling is alive."

"Splintered we shall turn to dust; divided we shall fade to nothing," Chuck Bass murmured, straight from the scrolls of the old, the words etched in the scars and the scales of the ancient woods of the earth. He turned to the left and spoke aloud, "I have scoured the mortal world near a decade in their lifetime. I have not found the daughter of the tribe of light. Will you allow our world to vanish for half of a princess?"

The tribe was silent, just as they had always been. The clan had decided many years ago, and nothing would sway them to his own father.

He knew it, and so did his own father. It was the reason why he had been sent to the mortal world. "Proof of her death. Bring proof of her mortality, son, and the tribes will unite. There is no other to take her place."

The ground shook from under him, and Chuck looked up to see the swirling storm above. Winds whipped and pummeled onto the domed palace. Beneath Chuck's feet the crack on the ground split the silver stone.

"Make haste, son, while there is yet a world to save."

~o~o~

Bonnie turned to Nathaniel, and laid a hand on his arm. Urgently, she whispered, "Whatever you do, spirit the prince away from here until you are certain he is good and ready to take a life."

And then Nathaniel looked around him, his hands fisting at his sides. "What is it?"

"I fear the halfling closer," she told him, "ever closer."

"Tell me her face." He demanded like the warrior he was, requiring knowledge to protect the sidhe prince.

She shook her head. Her eyes were not so clear to paint a face or figure to the sensation. "Since the cog, her presence grows. Soon, I fear, she will reveal herself."

And then Bonnie jumped to her feet. She felt the ripping pain through her entire body. Bonnie doubled up with the pain, and reached out a hand towards him. Nathaniel grasped her hand and gripped tightly. Bonnie gritted her teeth, and then threw back her head and let out a long, loud howl of pain.

She fell to her knees, and then her figure rippled and her body bucked. From her body emerged the full figure of the sidhe prince, rising from the ground and standing tall before her, his back to her. Bonnie trembled, yet for all of the pain ripping through her within she was grateful. She rested her forehead on the ground before her, closing her eyes.

Chuck Bass placed a hand on Nathaniel's shoulder, and told him, "Come morn, Nathaniel, it begins."

And then Bonnie pushed up from the ground and called, "Chuck!"

Chuck paused then turned to her. "You have done your part, and shall do so again when the sun is at its peak. That is when I need you, Bonnie."

"And I will do what you asked," Bonnie forced out. It would tax her, to call the storm and let it rage on towards the channel as she sat in the Tower. But she was ever the sidhe prince's magic, and Nathaniel his brawn. She unsteadily took to her feet. "Lord prince, make haste to Calais and away from here. The halfling is on this land."

Chuck turned to Nathaniel. "In England?" At Nathaniel's nod, Chuck declared, "Then in England we shall remain."

"The Black Prince--"

"In England we remain," Chuck decided. Turning to Bonnie, he stated, "I would have the storm earlier, and raze the whole of the city. Surely the Black Prince is not so black as to send his sister off to a death in the seas."

Bonnie nodded, then hung her head and murmured the incantation she had learned too young. The energy pulsed through her body as she continued, her voice picking up, the hands turning until her palms faced the sky. Around them the wind whippped, and the air dropped to a frigid cold. She opened her eyes and saw a blinding white. The words spilled from her mouth like the snow fell from the skies, then whirled around and around, covering the leaves and the ground.

Chuck Bass, with a nod to Nathaniel Archibald, strode away, treading shallow footprints on the ground now dusted with the snow. He took shelter under the trees and glanced up, there where the branches parted, and peeked at the moon slowly shadowed by dark clouds for the snow.

~o~o~

Caroline awoke with a start. The noise outside was muted, but it was there nonetheless. She looked around to see if the other ladies had been woken by the noise and found it did not rouse them. The princess' lavender must have worked well, as the ladies dozed through the pounding outside. Caroline rushed towards the doorway, and then turned around at the curt mention of her name.

She hurriedly pulled robe around her body. A sharp pain stabbed through her chest at the sight of the Black Prince emerging from the princess' privy chambers. Behind him was the princess, padding barefoot with her hair spilling down her back, freely without her headdress.

"Klaus, what is it?"

From his side, the Black Prince drew his sword and gestured towards Caroline to move away from the door. The muffled thud from outside told her that the guards had done their duty, and Klaus raised a hand to his wife to stay her.

The Black Prince strode towards the door and pulled it open, revealing a man with bloodied hands, held up by the princess' guards by both arms. "What is the meaning of this?"

Finding no threat, the Black Prince sheathed his sword. The princess cocked her head to the side, looking at the guest up and down. Noting that it was one of the lowly barons, she asked coolly, "Shall I retire, my lord husband?"

"Aye. It is of no concern to you," he replied.

With a glance towards Caroline, Blair retreated to her chambers and closed the door behind her. Caroline then stepped closer to the Black Prince. She had been witness to the prince's temper and rage, knew only the princess could stay his hand in Calais, feared that with the princess fast asleep he would hold nothing back and cut down this man. Caroline grew chill, noted how early it was that the cold weather dropped.

She was fairly certain the princess knew there were no limits to the Black Prince's wrath when she was gone, and it seemed cared less for English subjects than a host of the French. At the very least Caroline thought to rush and wake the princess should the prince revel too much in shedding a countryman's blood.

"Lockwood," Klaus stated. Caroline looked back at the Black Prince in surprise. The bloodied man gasped as he caught his breath. "What the devil do you in my mistress' chambers?"

"My wife is dying," Tyler spat out. "Your whelp is tearing her asunder."

The Black Prince's jaw set, and his fist shot out and grasped the front of Lockwood's tunic. "Hush your mouth, Lockwood. Has grief so possessed you to invite death into your life? You would dare claim this before the princess?"

"It is no lie, and I would have raised the child as my own for my love of my lady, but I shall not keep quiet with your seed killing her."

Klaus bared his teeth in anger, and at the sight Caroline straightened and fought down the fear that leapt inside of her. She placed a warm hand on the Black Prince's arm, and declared, "Then let us not tarry. Take me to your wife, lord baron."

"You do not think to midwife," Klaus protested initially.

And then Caroline turned to him and said calmly, "Better to midwife in their chambers than stand her and talk of your taking another woman to your bed, your grace, with the princess abed with but a door between us."

The Lockwoods' chambers stank of hot blood. Caroline arrived just as the swollen woman clad only in swaths of towels was turned to her side by the nurses and the midwife. A maid gathered the bloody soaked sheets from underneath her and then spread out clean blankets under her, rolling back the gasping, howling woman back onto the bed.

Caroline bit her lip. The gray pallor on her skin had set, and she feared the loss of blood or the length of the labor would cause her life. The smoke inside the chambers was enough to invite her bile to rise to her throat. Caroline rushed to the window and threw them open. To her surprise, the snow outside swirled and the familiar figures of the other prisoners from Calais were barely visible outside.

She wanted to yell at them to come inside and out of the cold, but so intent they were, and with a life and death affair where she was she could not spare another second wondering why they were outside. Perhaps it was a sad goodbye, or perhaps Bonnie merely gave a message for her family.

"What are you doing?" the midwife cried. "You will let in air and poison her with cold!"

They had not been wealthy, and her parents held roles to serve the townspeople of Calais. Caroline had been part of childbirth as a spectator many times enough to know that fears were merely fears. Oft times it was those born of privilege who were imprisoned with those fears.

When you barely had enough, you did not fear so much a loss. You had so little to lose.

"I will die," gasped the woman on the bed.

Caroline climbed up on the bed and grasped the woman's hands. "You will not," she insisted, knowing words cheered and renewed strength in women in despair. "Listen to me. What is your name?"

"Hayley," the woman sobbed.

"Hayley," Caroline repeated with a smile. "That is a lovely name. Listen to me, Hayley. You will birth your child and care for it. How can you not?" Caroline winced, knew from the way the woman's grip tightened that she rode another wave of agony. "Even pained in labor, you are the strongest woman I have held."

Hayley threw back her head and let out a growl of pain, accompanied by panting. As the pain lessened, she dropped her gaze to Caroline and rasped, "You are frighteningly gay and cheerful, my lady."

"Oh I am no lady. Call me Caroline."

Hayley chuckled slightly, and then pulled her legs up. Caroline watched as the maids on either wide of the lady rubbed a potion onto her thighs. "Rose oil, my lady," murmured one, "to ease the birth."

By the foot of the bed, an older woman knelt, head bent in prayer and murmuring her prayers repeatedly. She glanced to the side and saw the birthing chair sitting unused. When she turned to the midwife, she said, "The child cannot be coaxed. We are praying for it."

Caroline rubbed her chin. She had seen it only once before. She glanced at the Black Prince and saw him intently staring at the woman in labor, and Caroline wondered if he agonized over her fate. Once the Black Prince must have loved her to lay with her and conceive a child. She strode towards the maids and asked for hot water. She washed her hands thoroughly, and upon stopping by his side she told him, "I shall do all I can to save her, your grace."

Caroline asked for help in moving Hayley near the foot of the bed. She knelt before her and pulled apart her legs. Behind her there was an eruption of agonized prayer as the midwife spied as she did the limb of the child blocking the canal. Hayley met Caroline's eyes over her distended belly. Her husband took her hand and pressed a kiss on her knuckles.

"You will feel pain like never before," Caroline warned.

"Will it save my child?"

"It is our best hope."

Hayley nodded. "Hope. We hold on to hope if nothing else."

And then with firm hands Caroline reached between Hayley's legs and firmly pushed the limb back inside. Tears and sweat poured from the mother. Caroline prayed she would lose consciousness until the baby turned, but despite the pain Hayley screamed and held to her wits. The child turned under her ministrations, and as soon as it did Caroline stood and commanded.

"Take her to the chair!"

Hayley screamed as several hands moved her from the bed to sit on the birthing chair. Immediately she doubled over, and the round head of the child pushed its way out and into the world, sliding into Caroline's hands bloodied and wet. "A girl." Hayley fell back onto the chair, gasping, her voice hoarse. Hurriedly the midwife took the child, cleaned and swaddled it. The mother found enough strength to reach for the child and hold it to her chest.

She searched for the Black Prince in the room and found him. Caroline walked forward and looked down at the child's grizzled face, and wondered when the child would take to the prince. She touched her finger to the child's tiny fingers.

"What shall we name her?" Lockwood prompted, when it became apparent that the prince would not take the child into his arms and recognize her.

Hayley held onto Klaus' gaze, waited until what seemed like forever, and then afterwards looked up at Lockwood and replied, "Hope. If nothing else, hold onto hope."

"That is perfect," Caroline whispered, blinking away the tears. She looked up at the Black Prince, who said nothing, who stayed far away from his daughter without looking or touching.

Klaus said, "If there is nothing else for you here, Caroline, I will have water brought up so you may wash yourself in the quarters. I believe you have had enough time away from your service." To Hayley and Lockwood, Klaus said, "You are blessed with your daughter. I am certain that the princess will send a fine gift to welcome Hope."

Caroline walked out of the Lockwood's chambers, puzzled. Before she entered the shared quarters, she turned to Klaus.

He held up his hand, a gesture for silence, without giving her a chance to speak. "Truly, Caroline, would you mar perfection if you had the chance?"

Caroline slowly shook her head. He then walked back towards the princess' privy chambers, paused with his hand on the knob, then took a deep breath. "Your grace," she called to him. When he turned, she finally answered, "How certain are you that you would do that? I have seen your hand work on a canvass. You can create a masterpiece."

He walked towards her, and held up his hands. They were rough, rugged, scarred. She lifted her own bloodstained hand and ran the tip of her fingers from his knuckles to his wrist. "I was made for war, for conquest, Caroline. You have seen me. Eveything beautiful I destroy." He took a deep breath. "That -- that child was beautiful."

"Your grace," she started.

"Klaus," came the voice of another woman. Caroline started, and then looked behind him where the princess stood by her open chamber door. Blair continued, "My lord husband, will you come in?"

Caroline was cold and bereft when he left her side and walked towards the princess.

Klaus dropped a kiss on Blair's temple and answered, "Not tonight. There are matters of the state and our coronation." He glanced towards the windows and strode towards it, marveled at the ice the crusted the world outside. "The snow is thick," he declared. "Pray the sun warms that the ship can sail." And then he turned back to Caroline. "I shall ride hard to the docks; ensure the sea is safe for sailing. Mind your lady."

"Aye, your grace."

And the Black Prince walked past, but stopped a step away. "Wash yourself and take heed. It is not every day that one can save two lives." He looked back at Blair and said, "If I should not see you in the morn, keep well."

Blair nodded, and as he left the chambers she bid to her lady, "Goodnight, Caroline."

She returned to her chambers, melting back onto the door, resting her head back. Blair took a deep calming breath. She stumbled towards the desk and lit a candle from the main, placing it beside her. She took some parchment and started with a desperate plea to Elijah.

Upon ending the missive, she took the candle and dropped wax upon it, then used her ring for the seal. She waited for the wax to cool, then looked up at herself in the shadowy mirror. Blair closed her eyes. Her life was spinning. It was becoming apparent every day.

When finally she opened her eyes, Blair saw in her reflection a shadowed figure of a woman looking back at her with eyes completely white and unseeing. She jumped up from her seat at the sight. She whirled around and found herself all alone in the dark chambers.

tbc

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Part 9**

The Channel was near frozen, and there were barely ships on sight. Save his own, the rest of those docked were abandoned. There were none of the birds that flew over the sea, so freezing was the air that even the creatures hid. Still the Black Prince never hid, never cowered, never took shelter. It was a strength and a disease, he thought, depending on who was asked. Klaus stood at the beach as a lone small fishing boat arrived, with two older men huddled in their cloaks struggled onto land.

"How fares the water, good men?"

One of the fisherfolk looked up and elbowed his companion. Upon the sight of the prince both fell onto their hands and knees. "Your highness the sea is treacherous. Only but a halfwit would set sail in this weather. The snow's come upon us rather quickly."

"Aye," Klaus answered. "'Tis good the storm has come now than while the princess my sister is in the middle of the Channel."

"Your grace, you have been blessed. We had heard the stealth of ships on the way to retake Calais." The fisherman nodded. "Your sister escaped with her life."

"You have seen these ships?" demanded Klaus.

"Nay, your grace, but there are folks from the next port who had."

Klaus tossed his canteen to the fishermen, who enjoyed the warmth of the royal port. The Black Prince walked up to his own ship and called out, "Men, are you ready to serve your prince?"

"My lord," protested the captain, "the sea is too much a hazard to take your sister across."

"Not my sister, good man," Klaus informed him. "We cannot allow the bastard French to take away what had taken me one year to conquer. Today, lads," Klaus pronounced to the crew, "you serve once again your prince."

The crew had one voice, one loud cheer, despite the wicked weather. It was not frequent that young men could say that they had serve firsthand the prince regent when one expected merely to cart hostages to Calais. One of the king's escorts urged his horse forward. The young man jumped off of his beast and asked, "Your grace, shall I send for the princess if you will cross the Channel?"

"Nay--"

"Donovan, your grace," came the quick offer. "Matthew Donovan. I keep your horse, your grace."

Klaus grinned. "That is why you are so familiar. Well, master Donovan," Klaus declared, tossing the reins to the lad, "keep my horse then. My wife is princess regent. How brainless I shall be to take both regents from England with my father out in the countryside."

Donovan stepped forward just as the prince climbed onto the ship, his satchel plastered to his hip. "It would please me, your grace, if I can care for your horse in Calais."

"You wish to join this crew?" Donovan nodded. Klaus shook his head. "Return to the stables. You have your task and these men have theirs."

"Your grace, the princess asked me to deliver a message to your brother," Donovan called out. He held up the sealed and folded missive. "Shall I sail with you, your highness? It would be great honor."

"Give me the missive." Donovan ran up the ship and handed the letter to the prince. At Klaus' wave of dismissal, he miserably got off the ship and stood by the horses. "So my lady Blair has turned the stable boy into a messenger. Then you shall take a message home from me. Let Princess Blair know that her husband will personally carry her message to Elijah, and have Princess Rebekah assist my wife in planning the coronation whilst I am in Calais."

Donovan bowed deeply to acknowledge the order.

"And Donovan," Klaus called, "keep a close eye on my sister. She can be quite hardheaded when she is not consulted. I know she is eager to be married and a lady in her own house."

Donovan smiled. "I shall hope to ease the message to the Princess Rebekah, highness."

~o~o~

"The man is ruled by his temper, truly!" Blair groaned, walking back and forth, wearing rugged the floor in the receiving hall. She shook her head, and then peered out towards the doorway at the long line of people who would have an audience with her. "The prince had never waged a battle without his army, and not once without me!"

This was her complaint most of the fortnight that the Black Prince had been away. In truth she feared most of her ladies had been so weary of her that most had chosen to serve her within her chambers. It was now only Caroline who remained with her even as she performed her royal duties, and Blair suspected most of it was due to the maid's desire to be the first to hear of news from Calais or the prince.

Rebekah seemed to enjoy observing Blair perform her duties. Blair spied her sister stifling a giggle once when BBlair was asked to settle a petty squabble between landowners who could not decide on the borders of their estate, one of whom had carted a pig into court to gift to the princess.

To even out that she had not much support in the hall, the princess had invited the Lady Serena to join her circle while in court. She would soon be her sister, after all, when Klaus marries Elijah to Serena and angers Katerina even worse.

Rebekah smirked at her. "And you, sister, have much better patience?"

"Most definitely I have kept your brother from lashing out at cities," Blair exclaimed. "Without me, our Caroline would have been orphaned. That is the temper your brother has, and that is what needs to be curtailed."

Rebekah walked over to Blair and laid a hand on her shoulder. "Then should we not be grateful that Niklaus is so impulsive he had as well left behind his army?"

Blair sighed. Lady Serena motioned for the guard to allow in the first visitor, while Blair made her way back to the throne. It was interminable, and Caroline watched in fascination as the princess raised her chin and listened so intently, and so dispassionately meted out judgment and gave her decision.

Caroline imagined sitting in that chair, right beside the prince, knowing she could not be as cold hearted or severe. This was the young child painted in the gallery. Aside from those big eyes and those lips, the princess was near unrecognizable.

And then there was a hush in the room when the next man took his place before the princess. Caroline recognized the way Blair's shoulders stiffened, and knew there was a tension that cloaked her. Out in the Tower they had been almost friends, and right here where the entire court could observe the princess was cool, collected.

"Monsieur, how can we help you?" asked the princess, as if they had not spent the hours after Masses the day before standing under the tree, laughing over a story that Chuck Bass had seen fit to tell.

"Your grace," Chuck Bass stated. Oddly enough it was only in England that Caroline had heard the most out of this young man, and he had lived in Calais in such a young age, almost as long as she could remember. "My ransom is paid, and there is no reason to keep me and Nathaniel Archibald in the Tower."

Blair nodded. "Monsieur, your ransom is paid and we have handsomely prepared your ship home. Once the Channel is passable, you will leave."

"And if I shall not cross?" Chuck Bass pressed. "Should I wish to remain in England, your grace?"

Caroline wondered if it was her imagination, or if the princess' voice faltered when she asked, "Do you, monsieur? Would you wish to remain?"

"I have--I find--some reason to remain in England, your grace."

"Then let us think though the best treatment of your case, monsieur," Blair told him. "For now you may remain our guest in the Tower. Tomorrow we may have your answer."

Blair rose, and then waved at the guards to end the session. Chuck remained rooted at the center of the fall as the princess walked past him, his eyes to the ground in respect, knowing he could not meet her in the eye as they stood on the same level, aware that he could not turn his back on the princess even to leave the hall.

The princess retired to her chambers, where the ladies stood up and curtsied upon Blair's entrance. Blair entered her privy chambers, and one of the ladies gathered her skirts to follow. Instead, Blair called out, "Caroline!" Caroline's eyes widened and see hurried after Blair.

Blair, with her back to Caroline, took a deep breath. Behind her Caroline released the knots of her gown, then helped Blair pull off the heavy garments. She assisted Blair to the chair, where Blair touched the silver box that Dorota had placed there. Gently, Caroline pulled off the wimpled crown that sat on the princess' head.

Caroline's gaze met the princess' in the mirror. She gave a small smile.

And then Blair asked, "Do you love my husband?"

Caroline blinked, then widened her eyes. "Your grace--"

Blair reached for Caroline's hand in her hair to stop her. "Do you, mademoiselle?"

Caroline shook her head. "I do not know, your grace. You husband scares me, and yet makes me feel-- like I am the most desirable in the world." She flushed. "I apologize--"

Blair patted Caroline's hand. "It was I who asked. You are right to fear him. Klaus has a way--" Blair paused, then turned around and looked up at Caroline. Immediately Caroline dropped to sit on the floor, because one was never allowed to be looked up to by the princess. "I learned today that my husband has a bastard," Blair shared. "Thankfully it is a daughter, and should be little challenge to my future sons."

"Do you, your grace?" Caroline abruptly asked, out of curiosity. Realizing what she had just said, Caroline stammered, "Your grace, I did not mean--"

"Of course I love him," was Blair's swift response. "I know nothing else but to love him." She shrugged. "Often I care not to love or loathe him, but I know I love him. And I know he loves me." Caroline nodded. As much as the confession stung, she knew that the princess told the truth. Blair cupped her cheek, and then leaned forward to tell her, "But not the way I fear he is in love with you."

"My lady," Caroline protested.

Blair smiled down at her, a little bit, and assured her, "He has a child, bedded another woman and I know he did it in this palace. He and I are different, because he wanted another woman enough to get her with child and still I sit on the throne. Either way, you should be very scared, Caroline, because you love him not in the way I do."

And then Blair told her, "I am sorry, with all my heart, that I could not will him to free you." Blair reached for Caroline's cheeks and raised her face to her. "I am as much in prison here as you."

"You cannot free me, but I can free you." Caroline bit her bottom lip. "For one night, to do as you would. You are not the only one who can see the truth, your grace."

Instead of denial, the princess instead asked, "How?"

Caroline stood up and peered outside, noted the rest of the ladies were intent on their embroidery or their reading. She returned to the princess and told her, "If it pleases you I shall give you my clothes to wear, that you may be better able to slip away."

Blair looked back at Caroline for the longest silent moment. And then, as if there was a change within her, the princess stood and walked over to her. Caroline removed the wimple covering her golden hair, and then gathered the princess' dark curls and hid it within. Hurriedly, Blair took the clothes from Caroline, and Caroline then huddled under the covers in Blair's bed.

~o~o~

With each step, inside that Tower, passed the corridors and up the stone steps, Blair felt her breathing easing, her steps lightening. Her pace quickened until she could feel herself breaking into a run and giggling at the cold air that whipped on her cheeks that they grew ruddy. When Blair reached the large doors and pushed them open, she whirled around at her feet as she entered the private gallery.

She stopped still and the doors behind her closed. Right there before the streaming curtains of the open window stood Chuck Bass, his dark silhouette framed the brilliant sunlight streaming into the room.

"Your grace," he said at once. "Caroline asked me to meet you here."

Blair pulled the covering from her head, letting her dark curls tumble down her shoulders. He watched her intently. She walked closer to him. "You have said it often enough, and I want to hear it from you again. You want to leave this place."

Chuck Bass walked closer to her, and by now from the many days they had stood so close she expected the heat, the tingling sensation deep in her belly at his proximity. "Many lives hang in the balance," he told her. "I need to leave." She could not help it, and Blair looked down at his lips. "I can see you crestfallen, your grace."

Blair turned her gaze back up to her eyes. "I am but sad that my husband is away."

He frowned, and then stepped ever closer. Blair could see the flash of recognition in his eyes, wondered if he felt as well as she the bolt of lightning that ripped inside of her when he almost pressed close. "Is it your husband that takes your breath away so, your grace?"

Chuck saw the moment her eyes flickered to his lips, felt her breathing grow labored. And so he leaned down and close, with his lips hovering above hers. The heat of his breath played tricks on her mouth, and Blair rose on the tips of her toes and passed her lips onto his. Her fingers immediately buried in the hair at the back of his head. In response he deepened the kiss. When he released her mouth he kissed along her jawline and down the side of her neck. Blair breathed into his ear.

"Your grace, I shall remember this moment over and over, with you purring in my ear." At the words Blair started to pull away, because those were words she could not recognize, could not place; her reaction nothing familiar. And then his words stopped her. "Whenever I saw your from afar these past months, my lady, on the prince's arm, I knew your were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen."

Reluctantly she extricated herself from his arms. "Is that who am I to you, Bass--an accessory?"

"Next to him, seeing how he treats you, knowing how you can be so warm and different from how you are with your prince, aye," he admitted. "On him you are an accessory. On me--"

Even knowing they were alone in the gallery, Blair covered his mouth with her hand. "Hush. Should you be heard, you will hang, freed man or not." She pulled him with her deeper into the large room.

There in the corner, far from any prying eyes, he told her, "Should we be seen or heard, I will hang for more pleasurable sins." Holding her gaze, he took one of her hands in his, then brought her fingers to his mouth, kissing them one by one.

Blair watched, enraptured, by actions she had never once seen or felt before. He kissed her, paid attention to her fingers, as if he worshipped her, as if she was desirable. She should not. She knew that this was not wise.

Still, Blair leaned forward and pressed a kiss in his throat.

He confessed to her, "Once I told you that my world spun at the sight of you. That was a lie." Her eyes fell. And then his lips were on her cheeks, her eyelids. She had never been so surrounded by a man. "In truth even the scent of you, the feel of you, your nearness. You have bound me such that I am loathe to tear myself away."

She held his gaze as he was ever closer to her. With him she was no princess hiding away. It was as if she stood in an entirely different world. Her hands had a mind of their own, because then she was slowly pulling at the ends of the lace that held together the borrowed dress she wore. Once she had stood before a man like this, but this time took the memories of anyone else away. The dress fell to her waist, and her breasts fell free, giving him a brief flash of heaven before her hair fell over them. The pink nipples peeked from under the thick dark curls.

Chuck reached for one, hesitantly, almost afraid, and then she ran the rough skin of his thumb across the tip. Blair bit a lip, then threw her head back, resting against the wall, realizing as she looked up with her eyes wide open that she was pressed wantonly right beside the portait of her as a child that Klaus had once upon created.

But she was no child now, half-naked, exhaling through her slightly open mouth.

"You are, your grace," he told her as he bent forward to kiss the underside of her breast, "most definitely the woman."

Her hips bucked against him. Like one who thirsted for a decade, which she did, Blair's half-lidded eyes watched as his dark head moved to take one nipple into his mouth. She swore she cried out when he rolled the tip with his tongue. And then she was pulling at his tunic, baring him to her. He straightened, loomed before her. She ran her fingers over him in marvel. Mimicking his actions she leaned before him and placed a chaste kiss on his chest. Blair looked up at him and declared, "You are so warm." She placed a palm over his chest. "How rapidly beats the heart of a man."

"Only with you, your grace. You send my heart racing."

She was caught. She could not move, did not want to leave. Blair felt the seeking hardness against her belly. It was so utterly new, so captivating. She pulled him to her once more and felt the tip of his tongue tracing her lower lip. Her mouth slackened and she sighed. When his mouth closed over hers Blair felt the prodding movement of his tongue, so for one moment she decided she would let him in, and felt the rough and smooth caress of his tongue on hers.

She moved against him restlessly, breathlessly. Was this how it was to be a wife? His large warm hand rested on her belly and she near wept at the sensation. And then she started at the feel of his large hand on the top of her thigh, her skin burning in pleasure. He reached under her skirts, and tears rose in her eyes when his hot fingers reached between her legs. His hand teased the fold, and two fingers dipped gingerly to part her.

"How do you feel?"

Blair released a breath, a sob--she knew not what. He stroked along the slit and Blair grasped his upper arms. She swore she had embarrassed herself, so slippery was she.

"You are so tight, and hot."

When he started to insert a finger into her she grabbed his wrist. "He will know," she whispered in caution, her heartbeat loud, pounding in her ears.

"How?"

"Trust me," she choked out. "If you have me, he will," she rasped breathlessly. Blair rested her forehead on his. How rapidly had things escalated between them, and how quickly she had woken from the most irresponsible, pleasurable mistake. "I do not wish to release you, if only for myself. Her finger flitted over his lip. I want you but--"

"Then come with me."

Blair looked back at him. "I am princess regent. My husband is the Black Prince. One day I will wear the crown of England on my head. Do you truly think I should surrender all this for a merchant's son?"

He shook his head. "For one who adores you much more than your husband does. We are inevitable. Let me show you. In the face of true love--"

She did not hide the surprise in her voice when she asked, "Do you love me?"

"Do you?" he returned.

And to his surprise, in a voice as genuine as he had heard before, she answered, "I can."

This was the weakest he had been, the most vulnerable. But she was before him and she bared herself such that deserved the same candor. "I loved you the day I saw you standing outside my city."

"He will destroy us."

Slowly she pulled up the dress to cover herself, and with trembling hands she laced the clothes tighter over her chest. Before her, said, "Your husband cannot kill what he cannot find. I want you to run away with me. We will go to Avebury, and then escape."

Her gaze flickered to him. "The moment I am missing, there will be soldiers after me. They will know you have gone," she told him, "and they will hunt you down and kill you." Her breath hitched, "And he will keep me alive until France is his, and I will always remember."

She turned her back to him, and he caught her hair and pulled it up in a bun to hide it under the wimple. "There is a place," he told her as he dropped a kiss on her nape, "where you will never have to hide, where I control everything and I can give you all that you desire." Blair closed her eyes. "There is a place where your husband's strength is but a pesky nuisance compared to mine."

She turned around and then smiled up at him, "You are a dreamer. Perhaps I will dream with you."

"Ride hard, your grace, and I will come to you."

"What of the lives that hang in the balance? What of the task at hand?"

Chuck placed a kiss on her temple, but she shook her head and pulled him down to her lips instead. "Then hastily I will end it. Nothing will keep me from you."

"Will you set it aside, Chuck?" she asked him. "If you should have me, will you set me first above all?"

~o~o~

He was yet some distance from the two when he heard the muttered chanting coming from Bonnie Bennett. Chuck lengthened his stride, eager to hasten the kill, needing to end the mission now. He pushed open the door to Bonnie's room to find Nathaniel standing before the druid witch.

The candle between them burned bright, then sputtered briefly before lighting again.

"We will reveal the face of the halfling tonight," Nathaniel informed Chuck. "Each day that passes and the stronger are the halfling's powers, the closer we are to revealing her. She cannot hide anymore."

Bonnie's chanting grew louder and quicker. Behind him, outside the window, the winds blew stronger and the snow fell harder. He looked out to the grounds and saw Blair cross the snowy ground, then fall to her feet. She then picked herself up, and the thick snow underneath her cleared until Chuck could swear from the distance that the princess walked on the firm stone pavement. She rushed back into the tower across, back to the palace.

Bonnie threw back her head, and the flame of the candle is extinguished. Bonnie watched the smoke curling from the wick with eyes whited out. And then Bonnie closed her eyes and when she opened them the black in her eyes returned.

"Did you see her?" Nathaniel demanded.

Bonnie nodded. "It's the princess," she revealed. Chuck glared at Bonnie, then remembered his father's words the day he was sent to the mortal world.

The sidhe halfling would pull him. The sidhe halfling would fool him.

"The princess-- the princess who is the reason we have been captured and taken to England?" Nathaniel clarified. His hand hovered by his hip, where Chuck knew he could pull out of the air his golden-leafed sword.

His eye twitched. Chuck commanded, "You will not raise a hand to her. I am the prince. I will snuff out the light." Chuck turned towards the door.

Bonnie called out, "What will you do?"

"I will take her power, just as I should have from the beginning. I know why it grows. She is Inviolate."

"How do you know this?" Nathaniel demanded.

"I just do. And I know she will continue to gain her strength in this world the longer she remains inviolate."

"My lord, the moment you need me, I am ready and able to take her," Nathaniel swore. "I will be the last she would suspect, and I will lay down my life for you. Should she gain enough power, her half-blood will not matter. Between the two of you is mutual destruction."

Chuck closed the door behind him, leaving Bonnie and Nathaniel in the chambers. He stopped at the corridor and closed his eyes, playing back in his head those moments in the gallery, just as she gripped his hand and held him from her.

She had played him, would continue playing him. But a full-blood prince would never fall to a halfling.

It was time for war.

tbc


	11. Chapter 11

**Part 10**

The dark prince waited in the shadows. There behind the trees he could vanish, blend into the shadows. There he waited, watching the princess as she, clad in the winter white fur of another, hurried towards the gates. She stopped right there, with the white fur cloak framing her head, her face scant hidden, as if the mere fur could hide her from the prying eyes.

As if the disguise was enough, and he knew not if she were ignorant or innocent to be hiding so plainly, whether the Black Prince was in the kingdom or nay. Now that he knew who she was, Chuck could at least name the almost painful wrench in his gut, and that heavy, inexplicable pull in his chest at the sight of her. She looked back up towards the tower that had held him.

It was out in the darkness where he watched that he saw the crestfallen look on her face, and the pang in his gut threatened revelation. It was there where he almost missed, so intently did he watch her, his trusted Nathaniel storming towards the princess, his hand hovering over his hip in preparation. In the heavy misted twilight, that Nathaniel strode and shed his human clothes and appeared in the gilded, brilliant woven robes of his tribe, and his golden-leafed sword took physical form at his hip. His hand fisted over the hilt.

So Chuck stepped quickly out of the shadows and onto the stark white backdrop of the snow, so easily standing out in his dark cloak. From behind Blair Nathaniel stopped stock still, met Chuck's livid glare, then turned back to walk away. Too late. Because now before Chuck hid back into the shadows he saw the white hood fall to reveal luscious brown locks framing that hopeful face.

And then, he was mute. Because this halfling was so utterly lovely that she was, to him, completely unbound by this world or the other, so truly unreal that he was daft and unworthy of his own crown that he did not recognize her. His father did say he would be enraptured, and he was from the first moment of Calais.

As much as he was captivated this night.

"I thought of it," she confessed to him, breathless. The Lady Blair looked on with such wide-eyed innocence, such lucid air, that Chuck was stupefied at the sheer brilliance of her pretense. "I thought long and hard, and I know now what to do." The princess reached out a hand, but he dared not step forward lest she had him entangled in her heady spell.

"Princess --" He cursed at himself, because wise as he now was to her true nature, still he longed to touch her so.

Nathaniel was off, yet still Chuck knew out there hiding and watching was the guard that his father had sent for him. This princess, whether or not he spared her, would always be in danger with Nathaniel.

When he did not reach for her proffered hand, her arm fell to her side and she frowned. "Chuck," she asked breathlessly, "what is it? I will ride hard, just as you said. I will wait for you in Castle Mere."

He wanted nothing more. He swore he would lie awake in his bed that night and dream of what could have been, out in the country where no one would see, where she was not a princess and he was not here to kill her for a crown. In those cool nights they would lie on the grass and count countless stars littering the black sky. Out there where no one could ever know that he was in this world only to spill her blood.

"Do not," he warned her. "You will find it empty, and it will be empty for long because I shall not follow."

When he stepped back to move away, Blair's lips thinned. She called to him, "I warn you, monsieur, not to turn your back on me. Do not humiliate me."

"Your grace, who am I to have the ability to humiliate you?" he pushed. "Surely I am but a pebble in your shoe." And yet when she walked towards him he was frozen. With liquid burning eyes she looked up at him. "Your grace, let us be apart. Allow Nathaniel and I to leave. I made a mistake. I cannot stay to destroy you."

"It will take more than you to destroy me," she claimed proudly, and how he wanted to take those sweet lips once again, feared he would drown in them. Blair turned her back to him, then covered her head with the hood of her cloak, then hurried away.

Chuck watched her leave. And then, as he suspected, and more quietly than he expected, Nathaniel emerged from the shadows of the pillar wall and stopped to the right of the prince. "Majesty, you could have ended it here."

"Proof of her death," Chuck murmured. "That is all that was asked. There is no destroying the princess as long as she holds her power."

Nathaniel turned to Chuck, who still followed her departing form with his eyes. "You would deceive the tribes," he surmised. "If you were to succeed, always there will be threat that she will arrive to take the crown."

"No one ever needs to know," the dark prince decided. "She will never be able to come home. All we need to do is ensure her power withers."

~o~o~

The Black Prince wielded a strong and heavy sword, comparable to no one else in England and France. In the darkness, cloaked in the heavy fog, the Black Prince arrived with barely two hundred men and slipped into a nearby cove to hide. In one dark night the Black Prince roused his soldiers and slew the hundreds that had encircled Calais in their makeshift tents and low, cautious bonfires.

It took no more than a half an hour for the bodies of the French to litter the ground, and atop his steed the Black Prince waited for French blood to seep into the grounds around his city.

"See before you, men," the Black Prince declared, "and know it is with the blood of these soldiers that my city will be surrounded by fertile soil." The thunderous cheer that erupted was enough to strike fear into the hearts of any other soldiers that thought to attack Calais, and Klaus knew for some time the city would be safe.

For good measure he ordered archers to send a rain of arrows to create a mock perimeter around the battlefield. "Let not the French gather their dead until morning and the sun reveals the horror you have wrought," he ordered the men. "Have them see the death around us, and know there is no recourse from attacking England other than the death that lies before them."

Klaus turned his horse into the city, and the massive gates parted to allow the victor in. He rode towards the governor's mansion, marveling at the quietness around him. He strode into the mansion and took the steps to the master's chambers two at a time, and pushed open the doors unceremoniously to the private chambers.

The flickering light perfectly captured the dancing shadows on the wall, and Klaus stared at the naked body atop his brother. Katerina squealed in her shock and gathered the sheets to her chest.

"Your city is under siege and you lose yourself in a woman?" Klaus demanded of his brother.

Katerina rolled off Elijah and buried herself under the covers. "Klaus, you come unannounced to our chambers!" she protested.

"I am the bloody prince regent of England, soon king of England and France," he replied lazily. "This city is mine. I may come and go wherever, whenever I please." And then Klaus turned his heated gaze at Katerina. "And truly, dear Kat, I have seen and touched what you peddle."

"Klaus!" Elijah cut in. "King or not, you have installed me in Calais and this is now my own. A little respect is not unreasonable, brother."

Klaus' eyes narrowed. He strode towards the windows and pushed back the curtains, then gestured to the darkness outside. Elijah stood, unashamed of his nakedness, and then as he walked shrugged on the robe that Katerina handed to him. He saw the border of flaming arrows around the perimeter of the city, and looked upon a dark litter of bodies around them.

"The French stands on your porch, and you would waste your time with this woman."

Elijah drank in the sight before him, then asked quietly, "Kol? Have you seen our brother? We take turns manning the city, and tonight Kol guards Calais."

"Our young brother was not in battle, and definitely not on the parapets. I would have known," Klaus offered. "Pray he is fast asleep abed than outside the city walls mixed in with the French."

Elijah shrugged. "Knowing our brother, Kol is buried between a woman's legs addled with wine such that he could not know the enemy knocks on our door."

Klaus handed over Blair's missive to Elijah, then turned to Katerina, who hurried out of the bedchambers. Elijah plucked the missive from his brother's hand. "Tell me not you crossed the Channel to deliver your wife's letter." Elijah tore open the wax seal and skimmed the writing.

"I crossed the Channel because of news the French had amassed soldiers around you," Klaus pointed out. "And to invite you to the coronation. I want France to know the glory that would be theirs with a king and queen such as us." At the sight of the slight frown on Elijah's face, he asked, "What does my wife write?"

Elijah walked slowly towards the fireplace, and then, with the flames throwing playful shadows on his face, asked, "How will France bow down to an English king?"

"They will bow to a king with an undeniable French consort."

"You put all your hopes on a woman of French blood?" he asked.

"Then what?" Klaus pressed. "Much as you are useless in the battlefield, Elijah, you know I respect you in political strategy."

"They will bow down to a king who can promise a descendant of the French king in the throne." Elijah grasped Klaus' arm. Klaus met his brother's fervent gaze. "You may have the grandest coronation in all the land, Niklaus, but without a child the French will never recognize you." And then Elijah asked directly, "What use is an impotent king?"

"I have a child!" Klaus injected.

"You have the child of a baroness who whored herself to you, with her own husband in your court."

Klaus' brow arched. "So Blair comes to you about me."

"She is as much my sister as she is your wife. I have known her ten years." And then, before Klaus' eyes, Elijah tossed the missive into the fire, where it caught and turned into ashes.

"Who would dare challenge my claim to the throne, married to Blair Waldorf this decade past?"

"Without a child, your marriage can so swiftly be annulled by a plea to the Vatican." Elijah stepped forward and muttered to him, emboldened by the same plea in the missive, now in words, finally sorrow shared by the princess. "Your marriage remains unconsummated, brother." When Klaus moved to protest, Elijah gripped Klaus' arm. "Anyone can see should they not be so fearful of you. You are unmarried until you bed Blair."

"In time--"

"France is ripe for plucking, Niklaus, and so is your bride. Get her with child, and you will see that with her son at your right hand, France will kneel before you."

~o~o~

Caroline waited with the princess at the alcove, and she had managed a few furtive glances towards the blank expression on the Lady Blair's face. Being an attendant to the princess she stood a few yards behind her together with the rest of the ladies. Behind her the palace was overrun by the servants preparing for the return of the prince regent as soon as word had come the day before of Prince Klaus' ship being sighted off the coast.

The thrum of activity behind her was energetic, lively, harried. The princess Rebekah's curt voice arrested the servants as the palace was readied, and a simple supper was prepared for the prince and his men. Cut logs were carried inside by one of the stable boys, and Caroline noticed the way Rebekah's hand reached towards the young man, lingered ever so briefly on his upper arm, as Rebekah quietly bid him to start a raging fire to warm her brother.

Caroline had witnessed enough how well and naturally Blair commanded a household, and was surprised at the somber quietness with which the princess stood patiently for her husband.

Towards the side Caroline noticed the baroness holding her daughter in her arms, eager to greet the prince upon his return. The baby bounced in her mother's arms, as if sensing the arrival was of import, that she was there to greet a father who did not recognize her before the court. When the baroness Lockwood peered towards the princess, Blair did not turn to her, but Caroline noticed the slightest tightening of her lips, knew at least, in that, the princess was not fooled.

And then the large doors yawned open. Caroline's heart skipped beat at the sight of the Black Prince, his grace Lord Niklaus, in his riding gear striding into the palace. Caroline noticed the half a step that the baroness took with her daughter, and even Caroline silently called for him to turn to her, to see her.

And then the whole of the court fell to a knee and dropped to a curtsy at the arrival of their regent, including the princess. Caroline slowly lowered herself to pay her respect.

And then, the prince's quiet footsteps neared her. She caught her breath.

Until he stopped. Caroline looked up and briefly met Klaus' gaze. She watched as the prince took Blair's hand and bid his wife to rise.

"Princess," came the voice she had thought of in her dreams, addressing a woman who was not her, a woman who was his own wife, "what a sight you are."

~~

From behind her husband, Blair caught a glimpse of Elijah, who nodded at her knowingly, purposefully. She tightened her hold on Klaus' hand. "Welcome home, your grace," was her gentle greeting. Blair could feel the burning, searching looks sent their way, knew not where they came from, but relished them none the same.

Many women had been had, the most recent had been so flagrant she displayed the issue before the whole court wanting notice. But she was the wife, and Niklaus would never humiliate her before all those who watched.

"You would not believe, princesse, how painfully I longed for you."

Blair stifled a grin at the blatant lie, knowing the words were spoken for the benefit of those who thought they had claim to him. But there had been far too many times in the last decade that he took refuge in their marriage once he tired of other women. With a firm hand at her back he guided her towards the staircase. Blair entered the privy chambers and watched as he fixed the latch on the door to lock it, so that they were by themselves, with no prying eyes to observe them.

Blair turned to him, and she could not help but tremble slightly at the look she received. The humor was gone, in the privacy of the chambers, right near the bed, because he had never looked at her the way he did at that moment. He picked up her hand and kissed the inside of her arm. She released a slow, long, warm breath through her parted lips.

"I missed you," he said softly to her.

"So did I," she responded, watching with heated eyes as he lowered his head to kiss her wrist. With her other hand, she buried her fingers in his lightly dusted hair.

And then he wrapped his arm around her waist firmly, and when he straightened he pulled her flush against him. The air released from her lungs, and quickly she gripped his shoulders to steady herself. She searched his face for a clue, for anything, that would tell her what had caused the sudden change in him.

Before she could ask, the moment her lips parted, his mouth took possession of hers, his tongue delving into her mouth, teasing and burning and drawing her more. Her eyes fluttered closed as he overwhelmed her senses, and humming in her head was the realization that she had waited more than half of her life for this very moment.

Afraid to break the dream, Blair walked backwards, grasping his hands, until she sat on the edge of the matrimonial bed that had sat unused. When she looked up at him, his figure looming over her, she smiled the slightest of smiles. She quickly allowed it to fade lest he think her a child once more, but t her surprise she returned her smile with one of his own rare ones, lopsided and half of a smile, as he knelt on the bed beside her.

He then lay on his stomach beside her before turning to his side. Her fingers fluttered over his cheek. "What wife am I that I cannot even ask of your journey in the storm?"

He shook his head, then brushed a thumb over her lips. "What man can think of sieges and travel with a beautiful wife lying before him?" He reached up to pull closed the curtains of the bed, and then he slowly moved to cover her body with his weight. "Shut out the world outside, princesse. Long we have lived under their watch. Tonight, for the first time, I would be intimate with my wife."

And it was then that she moved to sit up. Klaus sat up by her knees. Blair licked her lips and looked back at him. "Klaus, it is not that I have no wish to. I do. Many times before. But this--"

"This is too quick for you, too sudden."

Distraught, she nodded. "But you are my husband."

He nodded along with her. "And I, idiot that I had been, have left you a maid with no knowledge of what occurs between a man and his wife."

She met his eyes, and Blair could not contain the guilt that gripped her heart, and the sheer joy that she had gone no farther with Chuck. She gripped Klaus' hand. "I want to show you how much I love you."

He turned his hand and laced his fingers with hers. "You already have," he assured her. And then he kissed he temple.

Blair's heart sank at the gesture, familiar though it was, as it placed her once more teetering at the edge between child bride and sisterhood. She would not be set aside again while Niklaus fathered children with lightskirts and spent himself inside woman unworthy even of her presence. When he moved to rise from the bed, she hooked her arms around his neck and pulled him back down on the bed, pressing her lips against his.

When they parted, Blair was captivated by his swollen, moist lips. "I want you, Klaus."

He breathed deeply, and Blair knew there was no way to feign the harsh way he breathed. "I want you," Klaus admitted. "But long as we have been wed I forget you are a maiden and I must pace myself."

She shook her head. "We have waited long enough."

"Trust me."

Blair sat up on the edge of the bed as Klaus slowly peeled off the damp clothes he had used for travel, wet and cold as most of it was since he rode in the worst snow. She had seen him bare a few times before. Camping in sieges provided an intimate knowledge of the other that other situations did not afford. Klaus divested himself of his leather. Blair rose and, borne of their time together in war, walked towards him and knelt before her husband, helping him pull off his boots. Blair looked up at him, and then asked, "Will you prove it to me? Will you show me that you want me, truly want me this time?"

Holding her hand as she rose, Klaus pulled her close and drew her hand down to his crotch. He rested his jaw on her hair and took a deep beath. Blair felt under her fingers, and then pressed into her palm, the hard length of her husband for the very first time. "There I am, all for you," he told her, and she felt the movement of his jaw as he spoke to her. "This time, Blair, I come to you with open eyes. We will be husband and wife. Our crowns depend upon it. And because I care for you, I will help you ease into this."

She could feel the breath, in and out, inhale and exhale, at the words that marked the fulfillment of ten years of waiting and praying and promising.

Blair was going to be a true wife.

"When?" she asked breathlessly.

He pulled her to him, kissed the pulse point along the side of her neck. "I will take you," he vowed to her, "on the night of our coronation. And I will fill you, and together we will build an empire."

tbc

 


	12. Part 11

**Part 11**

The princess wore a brocade of gold to her coronation, and she had never seemed so spectacular and less of a human being than she did walking down the aisle of the abbey, sparkling and splendid as sunlight streamed down from the stained glass windows. Caroline swore she would keep her eye on the princess. She served the princess, only needed to think of her interest. She would pretend to, at least, until she could be freed from captivity and the prince would allow her to return to Calais.

Caroline refused to look towards the prince. The night of his return, it had been apparent that something had changed while he was in France. At her approach, the princess Rebekah had at once cut into her path and asked that she take her part in the preparations for the coronation. She had been hustled and bustled back into the Tower as ladies and lords of the court brought the regalia to the abbey. She had not once encountered the prince after his arrival, when he had walked past her and paid heed only to the princess.

Yet she could not help that the Black Prince was a sight as he entered the abbey in the procession, holding on to his wife's hand as if his kingdom depended on her. Caroline watched closely the prince as the archbishop walked around the abbey. And that was when she saw him, that unfamiliar man who sat close to the pulpit. She leaned close to Lady Serena, whispered so softly for her fear of disrupting the coronation.

"That man--the dark-haired one--standing by the princess Rebekah. Who is that man?"

Serena said softly, "That is the prince Elijah--the man who would have been king, save for his brother's reputation and his father's preference." Caroline looked up at Serena in confusion. Serena expounded to her, "The king's eldest son, who had renounced his claim to the throne."

For Caroline, the concept was suspect. "Who on earth refuses the crown?" she exclaimed.

"Elijah Mikaelson," Serena offered.

Caroline watched in rapt attention, and the movement was slow, the gesture was perhaps even meaningless, but she was in such captive attention that she noticed the very moment that princess Blair took her eyes off of the archbishop and very slightly turned her head to the side, then nod towards Elijah as he stood on the sidelines. And then, much to her constern, the prince Elijah gave a curt nod to his brother's wife. It was such brief moment, and Caroline told herself it meant nothing save for her own paranoia being a prisoner here.

Prince Klaus and Princess Blair paused at the foot of the archbishop, then knelt at the administration of the oath. Then, as Klaus sat on the large wooden chair of King Edward with the princess sitting to his right, the archishop annointed both with the holy oil.

The regalia of the kingdom one by one was placed upon Klaus' hand. Even in the distance Caroline could see the lock of the prince's jaw tighten as he held the items handed to him. First the spurs, and then placed on his outstretched hands was the sword that had last been held by his father. Of all the things that Klaus would hold, Caroline knew that there was nothing that the prince deserved more than the sword. He had wielded the might of the kingdom long before he was crowned.

And then, as the archbishop turned, a hush fell over those gathered to observe the coronation, when the princess placed a hand atop the sword and bid her husband lower his arms. The dean stepped forward to take the sword and set it aside. And then, Klaus was presented with the golden orb of the sovereign, barely in his hands for a minute before it too was returned to the altar.

When the scepters were handed to the prince, the archbishop returned to place upon the Black Prince's head the Crow of St Edward. Caroline swore there were chills on her arms as she watched the crown being placed on the prince's head. The cheery call erupted around her, "Long live the King," and Caroline realized the abdication of the old king meant just that--Klaus was no longer prince, but a sovereign with one goal made more powerful by the office.

The archbishop then placed the crown on the princess' head, and from the periphery of her vision she knew that Prince Elijah stood straighter at his post as Blair was proclaimed queen regent.

The newly crowned King and Queen rose from the thrones, and Caroline watched then as the two turn to each other. Klaus lifted Blair's hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. In turn, Blair placed a hand on the king's face, her eyes growing brilliant. And then, Queen Blair laughed genuinely and drew Klaus down with her, rushing down the aisle as her ladies hurriedly sought to catch the train of the golden robes.

~o~o~

Everything was new, from the way he caught her eye across the hall and broke into a grin, to the way he paused when he she would speak and show her that he was listening to her. To Blair, every one of the changes that she noticed in him told her that for once she was at the right place, at the right time, and not some strange guest in his life.

She sat before her mirror the night of the coronation, looking at her reflection in the mirror, her fingers threading through locks of hair that her ladies would soon brush through. From behind her, Blair could see, Dorota emerged with a goblet of her steeping drink. Tendrils of smoke rose over the container. Blair took a deep breath, her chest swelling in anticipation.

Hurry, princess. We are almost at the end.

Blair turned on her seat and reached towards the brew. Her fingers hovered over the drink, with a tremble so slight yet still noticeable.

"My lady, here we are," Dorota said calmly to her, with eyes glimmering with hope and barely suppressed excitement.

"Here we are," Blair agreed. With two hands she reached for the brew and inhaled the scent of the potion, laced she had not a doubt, by the very sacred powdered oak she held dear to her heart. She closed her eyes and muttered the blessing, even as she knew full well that Dorota had already chanted over the drink.

For all the years she had failed, finally she would have him.

If he loved-- if we well and truly loved her-- she knew, so fervently, that the ancients would be saved. She would change the history of the world, and bring back to light the true ancient powers remembered.

And as the empire told and retold their stories, they would breathe life back into the Tuatha.

Blair lifted the bowl to her lips and tipped the contents into her mouth. The brew was scorching hot, blanketing her tongue and coating her mouth. She closed her eyes and swallowed deeply, her throat working to down every last drop. Despite the heat her mouth did not burn and the liquid settled into her stomach. She felt Dorota's hand rest on her cheek, and Blair looked up at her maid.

"Soon, child," Dorota told her, "you will swell with his babe."

Blair nodded, and returned, "And he will love me."

With a smile, Dorota told her, "How could he not? You will, after all, give to him what is most important to the prince."

And when he loved her, there was no turning back. She would have him, and he would never turn his back on her--not even when she told him the truth.

"France," Blair offered.

~o~

For all the women he had seen, not one compared to the sight that he beheld the moment he walked into the marriage chambers. The dozen candlelights about the room bathed her in their incandescence, and she appeared glowing and ethereal before him. It was as if a vise gripped his heart, and he could not believe this was the beauty he denied himself all these past years, lying alone so near to him.

"Klaus," she said quietly, breathlessly, at the sight of him.

He held up a hand in a move to silence her, then said, "Allow me time to admonish myself. You are incomparable, and I could have had this many times before." And then he shook his head and allowed himself the sweet pleasure of watching the slow smile curve her lips, lending her a much more desirable air if it were ever possible. "I am the greatest of fools, princesse, to have missed this all."

Even as he said the words, Blair knew she would always be princess to him, and it did not matter. Somehow, in his lips, the name was an endearment.

And she ran over to him, meeting him where he stood by the open doorway. She peered over his shoulder at the many prying eyes, the knights and ladies both. She buried her face into the crook of his neck. When he wrapped his arms around her and kicked back to shut the door, she looked up at his face askance.

"Proof of consummation?" he said back to her. Klaus grinned. "There is no man or woman out there, princesse, who would doubt that I will take you from the way you look tonight."

Never had he said such kind words, never had he made her feel so wanted. At those words she ose on the tips of her toes and locked her lips with him. Her body thrummed with the potion, and his words moved her even more. It was as if a warm palm pressed against her belly, making her curl and moan, growing her bosom and womb heavier and her limbs languid.

Her fingers entwined at the nape of his neck, and Blair stared deep into the eyes that were a deep blue to her. She hoped her child would have his eyes, that the he would always remember that she had borne his heir.

"I am ready for you, my lord," she told him.

And yet he shook his head. His arm went beneath her knees, bare that they were she felt the warmth of his skin beneath her at once. She sucked in her breath as he swept her high up against him. He carried her towards the empty bed and their bodies parted the sheer curtains. He lay her back in it and crawled up on the bed after her. When he did the curtains fell behind him, enveloping the two once more, as if entrapping them in their own small world.

A world where there were only she and he--a world where there were no kingdoms or ancestors or siblings or strangers from the another land. A world where this, she thought, her head falling back and baring her neck to his avid kiss, pleasure was only because she was his wife and he was her husband.

He parted her thighs and her nightrail fell from her raised knees to settle around her hips. She wore nothing underneath, and his movement bared the cleft between her legs, hidden by the dark brown curls. Her buttocks pressed back against the cool sheets, and she was so hot and liquid both from the sensations of his heated lips working its way over her shift and towards her breast.

"Klaus," she breathed.

His hands, calloused and rough as she expected, ran about her arms and then deftly his fingers interlaced with hers, raising her arms above her head, pressing her wrists on the cushion on either side of her.

And then a moan erupted from her throat when she felt the hot, wet mouth close over the peak of her breast, and his tongue wrapped around her nipple. It was fast and urgent, and the senses came to her one after another, making her heady, trapping her in their midst, overwhelming her with the feeling all around her.

She moved her hips beneath his, and idly she thought of how utterly unfair it was to lie so naked and exposed beneath her husband still wearing his trousers. Blair freed one hand and then reached between her legs for his pants, but he caught her wrist quickly and returned it pressed against the bed. He lifted his head from his breast, and she would have been brokenhearted at the abandonment but for the frigid air over her nipple, as her breast rose to rigid sensation underneath the wet and transparent nightraid. His hot mouth traveled to her ear and his wicked tongue dipped.

"In time, princesse," he promised to her, sending a warm pool of fluid to her core.

And then he released her wrists, and without him pressing her arms down it was easy to grab at his shoulders to push away his tunic. Blair sat up on the bed, watching bit by bit as he revealed himself to her. This was the body of her husband, long denied to her, finally hers to fulfill a promise long they made to one another. The tunic fell to the side of the bed, and next came the trousers. Her eyes widened at the sight of him. There was nothing to compare, but she drank in the sight and swallowed as she imagined how it would feel to have him buried inside of her to get with babe.

Her breathing became labored, but she knew her task and reached forward to skim her fingers down the length of it. Klaus took her hand and raised it to his lips, then placed a gentle kiss on her wrist. And then he climbed back on the bed and settled between her legs.

Blair rested her elbows on the bed, on either side of her waist, and raised her upper body up to prepare. Her nightrail fell down one shoulder, baring the breast he had suckled earlier. And then her lips parted when her husband moved down on the bed until his shoulders were by her parted knees, then dipped his head slowly. His fingers locked onto the hem of her nightrail and then his head was there, under her gown, his thumbs she felt parting her, and her arms were useless now. Blair fell onto her back as she back arched up from the bed. Her fingers buried into his ash brown hair and she squeezed her eyes shut that tears fell from their corners and coursed down her temple.

And then the next she felt she was spinning, out of control, and a guttural scream was ripped from her throat. It was as if she flew, and it was impossible. The stars burst beneath her eyelids and he was there with her, holding her grounded and against him as she thrashed about underneath him.

And then her hammering heart slowed, and Blair caught her breath slowly and opened her eyes. She saw him above her, smiling down at her, whispering to her with his glistening mouth, "Now, princess, you are ready for me."

It was so painfully easy and life changing, the way he caught her sprawled legs over his arms and settled them between his hips. He pressed his mouth on hers, deeply that the taste of her own body pierced through her consciousness.

And then, for a split second, he caught her eye as he hovered above her. Her warm brown eyes took him in, and he swore tonight she was more beautiful than ever he saw her before. Blair noticed the change in his gaze, but before she could think long of it, Klaus' body was stretching her so full, filling her ears with tears of pain and he buried himself to the hilt. He paused, feeling the liquid warmth engulfing him, knew it was both from her pleasure and the blood of the hymen he had just torn. She was heated and smooth and so tight that even as he tried to keep himself still longer he could not help when his hips thrust, small, jerky motions, until he had enough of her sleekness on him that he could move easily and completely in and out of the tightness of her.

He watched her, saw her parted lips, a peek of her glistening tongue, as she labored under him. He cupped her cheek and turned her to face him, looking into her dilated eyes. His thumb brushed her cheekbone and he drank in the flush of pleasure over her face. Encouraged, Klaus gripped her hips and thrust faster, harder, the regular motions becoming more erratic as he neared his peak.

She buried her nails into his shoulders and twisted underneath him, pressed back her head into the bed and came underneath him squeezing him so tight he could not last, and he spent himself inside her. Her legs trembled around his hips, and soon they fell open and splayed under him. He stilled on top of her, still buried in her, telling himself he did so as long as he could that he would take root inside her. Yet he could not answer why it was that when finally he pulled out of her and fell back on the bed, he pulled her to him and raised her leg so she would rest one over his thigh, or why he in her sleep arranged her so she could use his chest as a pillow.

In the middle of the night, when the candles had already sputtered out and engulfed them in darkness, Blair stirred in her husband's embrace. Very gingerly she pulled out of his arms and padded barefoot across the cold floor until she stood on top of the pelt. She buried her cold toes in the fur and then pulled from the chest her robe.

Had she not risen from the bed she would still be huddled in Klaus' warmth. Blair lit one of the candles and walked towards the dresser by her mirror, where she knew Dorota had left a cooling bowl of her potion. Blair took the bowl in her hand and drank the cold, bitter brew until all that was left were remnants of the ash.

And then from behind her arms wrapped around her waist, and the shadowed figure of her husband figured in the dim reflection in the mirror. Blair smiled and bit her lip at the sensation of his hardness jutting onto her back. "Your highness," she whispered, leaning forward to press her buttocks against him, "I am at your service."

And then he turned her in his arms, and the bowl clattered to the floor. He kissed her ravenously, and when he lifted his mouth he licked tentatively his lips. "What foul drink did you down, princesse? Surely we have wine or ale in these chambers."

Blair shook her head, then rested her arms around his neck. She pulled him to her while he was pressed right by her womb. "It is a potion by my maid to help me swell with your child."

His lids lowered halfway over his eyes at her answer. "There is nothing I want more than to have my babe in you. But there is something more we can do than simply take some witch's concoction."

And this time, the term could not offend her, not when he looked and felt the way he did. "Pray tell, your highness, what else do we do?"

And then she squealed when he carried her back to the bed in his arms.

~o~o~

It was in the morning that finally, reluctantly, Blair and Klaus parted. Klaus left his bride curled in bed, and he bid her recover so she would be at peak strength when he returned from hunting with his men. She lounged atop the sheets, playing with the string of pearls that he had awoken her with by running the cold round pieces over her bare stomach.

"Blair."

At the sound of the voice, Blair started on the bed. She quickly sat up and drew up the blanket over herself. Her eyes widened at the sight. "Elijah," she greeted. Blair turned to the doorway leading to her ladies' chambers. "You cannot be here."

"No one knows I am here," he assured her, but the assurance only left Blair more ill at ease. "I have been roaming this palace since I was a child. I know every hidden passageway here."

"Elijah, brother," she said softly, "perhaps we shall chat over breakfast."

"And we shall," he answered. And then, he looked down at the mussed sheets and settled on a point on the bed. He reached towards it and placed his fingers there. "I would ask you if it is done, but there is the answer I need."

Blair's eyes widened, and she pushed Elijah's hand away from the bloodstain on the sheets.

"Once we are certain that you carry his child, we prepare," Elijah stated. Blair's hands fisted at her side. "You are queen, and soon you will bear the next King of England, Blair. That is all that we will ever need."

tbc


	13. Part 12

**Part 12**

The prince of the sidhe knew the precise moment he ascended. The moon over his head grew blazing bright imposed upon the blue black sky. The perfect round glow bled at the edges, as if to melt away in the night along with the chill that enveloped him. He ascended in the chill into the most powerful being, and he knew only that the Inviolate was no more, her link with his world growing weaker.

Along the open road he paused on his horse. He did not require to turn around to know that Nathaniel was not far. And so he allowed the night wind to carry his quiet voice, and said, "It is done."

He kneed the beast beneath him so he could face his guardian warrior. Nathaniel bowed his head to his prince. "Our world is yours, sire, and no one else's."

"Not as of yet, but we are closer. She will be weaker, vulnerable, adulterated even more by the essence of these mortals." And then he bid to Nathaniel. "Now we will require the Druid. We cannot be far. It is time to free Bonnie as we align."

"The gold shall be easy to come by," Nathaniel assured Chuck, and the prince needed not to ask how Nathaniel would find gold so far from home. "Now we must part, your grace, as I take on the search for you."

"I've no doubt you shall find me when you are done." The horse whinnied beneath him and moved about restlessly on its legs. "Meanwhile, I shall begin knowing on her door."

At this, Nathaniel climbed off his horse and then knelt before his lord. Chuck Bass turned around and then kicked his horse into a gallop away from the warrior. From his distance, Nathaniel watched as Chuck raced past a couple of dark suited riders on horseback making their way towards London and the Tower. Vaguely Nathaniel noted the coat of arms emblazoned on the arm plate of one of the riders, a quartered symbol depicting a crowned red lion and a castle. He had not seen the coat of arms before in court, in the short time he had been there.

With a curt nod to the riders, Nathaniel then rode past and into the forest, leaving the two on the worn road. He would make it to his destination much faster with the length of that road, and he was fortunate enough not to fear the dangers that hid in the forest. At the very least, the way the two kept safe and stuck to the common road informed him they were not from the tribes or immortal.

In the morning, Rebekah sought an audience with Blair outside of her chambers. Bekah waited past the early morning and awaited the new queen. To her consternation, Blair took her time, and so she turned to one of the ladies. "Caroline?" Bekah prompted. "Who attends to the queen?"

"No one, my lady." And then Caroline rose to her feet belatedly, realizing at that moment that she was supposed to stand and curtsy, or at least look down in respect. Caroline bowed her head then as she felt the flust suffuse her cheeks when she explained, "His Grace the king has asked that we allow the queen to sleep in this morning."

Rebekah's brows arched at the statement, and her lips curved at its implication. "Now it is time for the sleeping beauty to wake. By this time, she would have had more than enough time to rest."

And then to their surprise, as well as the rest of the ladies, the doors to Blair's chambers swung open and out strode Elijah. Seeing her brother so calmly walking out of the Klaus' wife's privy chambers, Rebekah's eyes narrowed. Elijah had not been one to cause rumors, and Elijah certainly was not so idiotic as to not be aware of the implications of his actions.

"Brother," she called to him in an effort to soothe itching tongues, "an early morning visit to our sister, and you have beaten me to be the first to greet her this morn after her coronation."

In response, Elijah gave her a quiet smile and headed past the ladies in waiting, and out the door. Rebekah felt and heard the murmurs that immediately followed. Perhaps the queen had allowed Prince Elijah into her chambers when all the ladies had fallen asleep, she heard one. Perhaps the prince had always been free to walk in and out of the queen's chambers, Rebekah heard the far more dangerous assumption.

She quickly strode into Blair's chambers and shut the door behind her. At the noise, Blair turned towards the doorway in concern, and Rebekah noticed the almost audible relief in the queen at the sight of her. Blair's smile was firm, voluntary, purposeful.

And Rebekah chose not to address the surprising sight of a brother who was not the newly crowned king walking out of the matrimonial chambers. "Sister, are you fully recovered, or shall I expect my brother--" and then she emphasized, "--Klaus, to chastise me for waking you."

At her words, Blair's stance relaxed, and the queen hurried towards her and took her hand. It was not difficult to see--she positively bloomed overnight. "Bekah!"

There was a excitement that thrummed from the queen, one she had not seen since the day they met as small children. Rebekah was awed by the sheer joy on the queen's face, wished she could have some of it. Truly, her heart had not truly raced until she had met Matthew Donovan, and Rebekah embarked on a truly shameless and unrestrained affair with a stable boy and kitchen help. Over time the thrill waned, and her impending marriage hung over her head as an unwelcome yet completely expected change in her life.

"Last night--it was wonderful. Klaus--" Blair lowered her lashes, hiding her glassy eyes. And then her gaze flickered back to Rebekah, and Blair claimed, "When your husband makes time to love you, the whole world changes." Rebekah could not wrap her head around what had changed beyond the coronation, because truly Klaus had ever respected his bride and the highly profitable lands in France that came along with her. And Blair--she had ever been lonely. "Something is different," Rebekah stated, but with a lilt of uncertainty.

Blair's lips parted, and she started to speak but held herself at the last moment. Instead, the new queen threw her arms around Rebekah and gave her a tight embrace. "Wed for so long, but I married truly only last night, Bekah." Blair whispered into her ear as they pressed against each other. "Sister, you shall soon be wed and running your own household in Castile. If ever there was a chance for you to love the man who will lie beside you til your death, take it." And then Blair leaned back to meet her eyes. "I did, and I am all the better for it."

"I need no love," Bekah assured Blair with a small smile. "I have my lustful stable boy."

There was a brief flicker of uncertainty in the queen's features, but it was passing and soon gone. "Temptations will arise, sister, and doubts about what else there is. Quash them," was the queen's advise.

"How?"

"You are the Black Prince's sister, daughter of a legend in war. Destroy them like your brother used to raze cities and felled walls to claim back your ancestral lands."

Rebekah's lips curved into a grin at Blair's words. "And here I thought you were the reason that Niklaus has softened on France."

"Your brother sailed to Calais at word that an army gathered, and he had just come home from destroying hundreds of men who would have dared take back the port city," Blair pointed out to her. "He has not changed. Not yet."

The way that the queen moved, spoke, even breathed--they were different and interesting and brazen. Overnight she was happier and more confident, and Rebekah had a passing suspicion that it was more than just the weight of the crown. Perhaps she was telling the truth, and loving one's husband was a decision she had to take to have a happy life. Certainly she was dreading her marriage to a stranger.

When Niklaus returned to his wife's chambers, Rebekah observed in quiet fascination as her brother strode directly to the queen with barely a glance at her. He could not know she was in the chambers, because she knew Niklaus would not have been so free if he had been aware. The new king, fresh from hunting and still wearing the bloodied riding attire, pulled his bride flush against him, soiling her own shift with the grime of the hunt. Blair raised her lips to meet his eagerly, and when the kiss ended and they parted, Klaus lifted his free hand and opened his fist, revealing in his grasp some berries he had brought home from the trip. "They are sweet as your mouth," he told her, resting his forehead on hers.

At this, Rebekah made an audible sound of protest. Niklaus turned to face his sister. "Will you vacate our room, Bekah, or shall you watch as I show my wife how much she has been missed?"

Rebekah gasped and stomped out of the chambers in mock displeasure, yet out in the corridors and the halls she wandered thinking back to Blair's words, and the one encounter she had observed. Though Klaus had teased her, her brother was not a man to mock or pretend.

She could have that.

Could she?

Could a girl born to be wedded off to a stranger from a distant kingdom every truly live a happy, married life? Her mother certainly had not done so, and even the few ladies she saw in court were in varying degrees of misery or grudging acceptance of their fate. Rebekah thought back to the people she knew, and realized the only content woman she had encountered in court was Katerina on the arm of Elijah. And she had been a courtesan, and would never be married to her brother.

And so Rebekah found herself outside the stables, watching Donovan as he scrubbed down a strong mare. As he did so, Donovan had half a smile and spoke low, soothing the animal with a quiet, senseless story, asking questions about the hunt, keeping the beast's agitation low.

That young man would be a wonderful father to his future children. She could see it in the way he took care of her brother's steed, so patient and caring he was. It was a pity she would be ensconced in a lavish palace in Castile when Donovan would be raising his spawn.

Perhaps she would then have already done her duty over and over, and several heirs would be lined up to ensure Castile would never have to have the same violent issues with succession claims that her family and the French were going through.

Donovan noticed her then, and he broke into a smile and ushered Niklaus' horse into its stall. He made his way over to her, and Rebekah was assailed by the scent of sweat and horse's flesh. He opened his mouth to greet her, but she cut him, "I must wed the son of Castile so we can flank France in three directions."

Donovan frowned in confusion, but as she spoke slowly his forehead cleared in realization of what was occuring.

"England from above, and the queen brings Anjou. Niklaus had long claimed Aquitaine." Rebekah's hand fisted at her side. "Castile will give us the advantage of caging France from the south. Do you understand that, Matt?" It was the first time she had ever allowed his given name to leave her lips. This felt like a moment to use his given name, a moment to show him affection in her farewell.

"I understand war. My father was killed in battle, serving with the old king," said Donovan. "But I do not understand why you are telling me all this. You know I am aware that you will ba married off to some faceless Castilian." And then he reached towards her and grasped her arm. Rebekah did not pull away. "You told me you will still need me, especially on those seasons you are in England with your husband."

That was when her tears spilled, and she shook her head. "You need to forget I said that. We need this to be the end, Matt. I think--" she whispered, "--maybe I have to give myself a chance to live my life, this new life, this life I have been handed. And I cannot keep telling myself that there is another part of me back home."

Donovan's jaw tightened, and he stepped forward and leaned towards Rebekah. Bekah sniffed, and he rested his chin on the top of her head. He mumbled, "I thought you loved me."

At the words, those threatening words--because they could break her, they could make her unravel. "Maybe I do," Rebekah choked out, "but it matters not. You and I will never work. Do you imagine me rocking by the hearth of a stone hut, out in the fields, waiting until you've earned a shilling? Truly, Matt, do you see that in the future?"

"And if I said yes?"

She pulled away, and rested on him cold, expressionless eyes. "Then I say you are a fool and a liar," she told him. "We made a dream event, and you lulled yourself into believing when all along we both knew I would be far away. And you would be married in the chapel with some maid you meet in the tavern, or out here in the castle."

"So what will do, Rebekah?" he asked her. "Marry this man and then what--spend all your days insisting you do not think of me at night?"

Rebekah shook her head. She cupped his face, beautiful as it was, in her hands and told him, "I plan to marry and I plan to love him. If I am fortunate, he will love me like I plan. And then, Matt, I plan to decide that I will be happy."

He took a deep, tremulous breath. "Now who is a fool and an idiot?"

~o~o~

Her words stung, so he stung her in return. Matt Donovan strode towards the castle through the servant's hallway, hurt and humiliated, but too proud to beg. He never trusted these nobles, not since his mother abandoned her family for some forgettable baron before entered service in the castle. His mother had been the epitome of the stupidity of the common folk. A great beauty, his mother thought--or fervently wished until she convinced herself--that the baron would marry her and turn her into a landed lady.

She was ending her poverty, she told him as she packed up her few belongings. His sister Vicky had been young and clung to her mother's dress, pitifully crying, begging not be left behind.

And still that woman left, ending up a mistress and a whore, set aside the moment the king gave a wealthy ward to the baron, and the baron wed his own ward.

It was the day that his mother walked away from himself and his sister that Matt Donovan swore he would never beg again. His mother turned her back on them notwithstanding the pleas of her two young children. It was that same day that marked the moment that Vicky decided she would never be left behind again, the reason that early in her life, the time when his sister's menses first visited, Vicky found a man to cling to the way she clung to her mother's dress. And she never released him. It was the way Vicky lived, from man after man after man. She clung. She clung until she could cling no more.

It was the way Vicky died. She clung to a man who abused her and beat her, and she did not let go because she would die before she would be left again. And she did. One fatal night when the man turned to go and she screamed and grabbed onto him, pleading and kissing and clinging, he forced her away with so much force that Vicky had stumbled out a tavern window down to her death on the cobblestone streets.

Rebekah had been different. When all the women in his life had been dark and depressed, vulnerable and uncertain, the princess was strong and powerful, vibrant and most of all, she had seemed to want him. She had laughed and told him stories, and one rainy day when he found her stranded on her horse, out on the path, she had pulled him behind a tree and then kissed him.

A princess. The king's own daughter had kissed him, and wanted this boy who was so undesirable that his own mother had left him.

He had thought himself walking all alone in the servant's hallway--everyone was busy preparing for the arrival of some important unplanned visitor--until he heard the sniffling from a few steps away. Matt walked over towards a column and heard the noise coming from behind an old worn tapestry that had been relegated to the servants' corridor. He reached forward and then pulled the dusty tapestry to reveal a blonde young woman sitting on the floor.

At being found, the woman shot up to her feet and hurriedly used her bare hands to wipe the tears from her face. "I am sorry. I will leave."

"No!" Matt objected. And then the young woman turned gleaming, liquid, tearful eyes towards him. He shrugged. "You look and sound the way I feel," he explained.

The woman took a deep breath, and then said in a rush, "Well help yourself. Moments such as this are few and far between. Truly, my father used to call me a ray of sunshine and my friends looked at me as a hopeless idealist."

Matt grinned. "You do look bright and cheerful like the sun," he said with a touch of irony.

She shook her head. "This... is not who I am. This is what I have become in England."

The young woman could talk, and she talked so quickly as if someone was running after her, and she talked so much as if she had held her tongue for too long. His guess was that she worked closely with the nobles and was expected to be silent. "I think, truly, it is because I have been vanishing behind ladies richer and handsomer than me. I mean, it does not matter that I am often with the queen--"

Matt blinked at the girl. She was one of the queen's ladies. His eyes narrowed and he stepped back. He had no intention of being involved with another noblewoman, no matter how pathetic she looked at that moment.

Before he could walk away, she continued, "It really does not matter. I mean, to everyone I am a mere hostage that the Black Prince took a passing liking to."

The situation righted itself, and he did not even need to speak. He found the blabbermouth oddly charming. "You are one of the hostages from Calais," he surmised.

She nodded, and then extended a hand. When he looked at it, she let it fall to her side. "Caroline," she offered. "My name. My name is Caroline, and every second I spend in this court is a second less that I could be with my family."

Her concern was so reasonable, and it reminded him of his early, innocent purpose when he was not half cynical. She wanted to be back with her family.

"And this is why I find you crying here alone? Because you miss your family?"

She shook her head, and then looked down in what appeared to be embarrassment. "I had a good standing with the Black Prince, and I was counting down the days that I could ask him again to allow me to return home. It seemed like it was possible," she confessed. "He was friendly, and he seemed to like me enough. And then these past days he would barely look at me."

"This is what you can expect from these nobles," Matt told her. "Those in power would do nothing but ruin lives and break hearts. Never put your faith in any one of them."

Caroline frowned. And then she grabbed his hand and squeezed it tightly. "My parents are ill, and I need to go home. Will you help me--"

"Donovan," he offered.

"Will you help me, Donovan?"

Matt glanced towards the servants' exit, used for the help to get in and out on their daily tasks. "I can get you out and onto the city streets. The rest of the way you will need to figure out on your own," he told her. "Can you handle that?"

Caroline nodded eagerly.

As the afternoon wore off, Caroline made her way out of London huddled under the thick brown robe that smelled distinctly of piss of the horses. Beggars, she knew, could not choose and be preferential. But she had also been raised by the English Channel, with the fresh sea breeze coming into her room every night. The moment she stepped out of the city gates Caroline shucked the robe and trudged down the path to the country road.

It was nightfall, and Caroline realized the folly of her plan. She had no beast, no money, no food, no companion, an she was a woman walking down the dirt road infamous for thieves and burglars, even murderers. She was grateful she had no wealth to her name, but terrified that the very fact would make thieves angry enough to kill her.

Caroline stopped in her tracks when she heard the scuffle up ahead. She ambled to hide behind one of the large trees and peered towards the fight barring the road. Two noblemen were engaged in a fight with about half a dozen bandits on the road. She half squealed when she saw one of the two fall, leaving the lone traveler fighting off six opponents. That man was sure to die. It was a pity. He had an uncommon, yet attractive face. The set of his jaw and the strength of his chin were fine.

Caroline made her way towards the horses hidden in the woods. There was no better time to do this than while they were engaged in a fight, and no better people to rob than robbers. Quickly Caroline took a large satchel from one of the horses and gasped to see jewelry inside. She was merely looking for food, but she would not say no to treasure that she culd use to buy her way back to Calais. Caroline started searching the other beasts for food and other gems worth stealing, then spotted a knife in one of the sheaths. She collected it, and then turned back to the fight.

To her surprise, only four of the bandits remained. The handsome man seemed to waver on his feet, and Caroline spotted the deep crimson gash on his stomach. Fortunately, the man's companion was gaining back his feet. The other man raised his own sword and downed another of their attackers before falling to his knees once again.

They were not going to survive, and Caroline would steal but she could not be part of a murder just because she stayed away from sight. Hurriedly, Caroline untied the horses from the tree trunks, and then raised a trembling hand holding the knife. She only needed to do this to one, and the noise and surprise would impact the rest.

"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry," she muttered repeatedly as the knife came closer and closer to the horse's rump. It was tricky to keep away enough distance that she could not be kicked. Finally, Caroline cut the side of one of the horses and she dropped immediately to her side. The violent jump and whinny of one of the horses caused the rest to gallop away.

The three thieves left standing then ran towards the horses and what they thought were the treasures being carried away by the beasts. The two noblemen staggered towards each other, then grabbed at the other's shoulder and ensured the other was safe.

Caroline slowly gathered herself, then started to pull herself to her feet. When she looked up, the man she had been watching was standing over her, offering his hand. Caroline glanced at him wound, but took his hand all the same. He closed his hand around hers and she felt the large stone of his ring solid against her fingers. He grabbed his stomach, and Caroline suddenly reached forward in concern.

Realized she was touching a stranger so intimately. "If I will look at your bare wound, sir, I should let you know to call me Caroline."

And the nobleman gave a pained smile. "My name is Stefan, and that behind me is my brother Damon." He glanced at his brother before he told Caroline, "It seems our savior is a young woman. Two able bodied men, saved by a golden-haired maid."

Caroline checked the wound on his stomach and sighed in relief to realize it was a shallow cut.

"How is a young woman such as you here all alone in the road?"

She looked at him uncertainly. Caroline realized that if she was not found out, she would die on these roads anyway. Sometimes, she thought, she did not think her plans though. "I am one of the king's hostages from Calais, and I've escaped."

The man looked at her sadly. From behind him, his brother Damon leaned against his horse and stated, "You do know that we need to take you back?"

"What my brother needs to add there is that you will not survive out there all on your own, so this is the safest option for you. But I will ensure you are well treated, and will request that you be released."

"My ransom was paid, but the Black prince will not allow me free."

He gave her a smile. "Allow me to try. I believe I may have some influence on the king."

Caroline looked at him doubtfully. She had not known that many people had influence on Klaus, except for the time that the then Princess Blair convinced him to let the burghers of Calais live. And so this man's claim was intriguing. "Who are you to be so confident?"

Now Damon was astride his horse, and Stefan climbed up his own, then extended an arm so that Caroline may ride with him. When Caroline was seated in front of him, he told her, "The king shall be my brother."

Her head whipped back and around that she feared she may have hurt her neck. "What?"

"Our fathers negotiated my marriage to his sister," Stefan explained. "As my bride missed her journey, I am come to accompany her home. I brought with me a humble company of six knights along with my brother. Brigands happened upon us early on our trip, and one by one they have fallen while a handful we left behind to tend to their wounds along the way."

Caroline said in realization, "You are the prince of Castile, betrothed to the Lady Rebekah."

"There is no prince of Castile," Damon commented as he rode alongside his brother. "I am the prince of Asturias, but we are both heirs to the Crown of Castile. I shall inherit Leon. My brother is the son who will inherit Castile."

He had a charming smile. Stefan took her hand and kissed the back of it in his gratitude. She who was nothing in this land. "You saved our lives. I hope we shall be friends, Caroline."

So she answered, "Perhaps the very best."

  
tbc


	14. Part 13

**Part 13**

Five years before

Loca. That is what she was called, even by the very family that she had thought would never turn their backs on her. La Loca, they muttered under their breaths as she walked past.

More than the disrespect, it was the judgment that drove her away.

Away from home, and away from even the kingdom to which they had escaped. Katerina la Loca. Even in the quietness the curse followed her, biting at her footsteps, chasing her away like a rabid dog its prey. In the spare quarters that were Elijah's, Katerina fidgeted. She had come long and far, letting the past rob he of home.

One day, she had sworn, she would return triumphant, and let those who had taken from her burn upon the very ground they stood. Her parents had no wealth, no land to toil, that when they wandered into Castile and discovered their dark-eyed girl, a burden to her parents, was exquisite and caught the eye of a king, her father had been more than willing to trade her for a small purse. Young and with too much of the world undiscovered, Katerina had been bedded by a man older than her father, a king with princes for sons who were her age, attractive, and as mischievous as young landless men never could afford to be.

Katerina, at fifteen, found herself waxing with a child within months, and had not even reached her sixteenth year when she bore that king's bastard daughter. The labor was hard, pushed her to the very brink of death that Katerina had struggled against the dark claws that clasped around her ankles to drown her. Fought hard and harder still to stay alive.

Death would not take her. For her daughter she would never sleep again.

For Nadia--Nadia, whom the king had taken away after a moment of suckling at her breast. Nadia, who was handed to a strange woman to nurse. Nadia, who upon her mother's waking that night was already scurried away to a far off convent by virtue of her birth.

Katerina liked to think, in the countless night that she had lulled herself to sleep with Giuseppe Salvatore pumping into her young, hurting body, that her Nadia had been turned away because the king had seen the strength of her soul in eyes but moments old, knew his kingdom and his weak sons were in danger from the threat of her daughter.

And if they had whispered of her behind her back--loca, insane, madwoman--all because of her lost child, Katerina had taken it upon herself to destroy the Salvatores from within.

It was a lesson she had learned in the hardship of that gilded prison, in which she only served for the pleasure of a man and king. Some years later she would impart a similar lesson to the princess who would be a queen.

A woman is the most powerful creature in all the world, she would tell the princess Blair. There was no living being more dangerous than a woman who knew her power and wielded it well.

Once upon a time Katerina had proved it, sowing seeds of discord with nary an effort, as with calculated hesitance she had lured one of Giuseppe's sons--her daughter's brother, she thought idly--into her bed, and drove the other into half-madness at the very sight of her with the father and the brother.

Katerina knew without a doubt that with little time she would have burned along with the Salvatores when the houses of Castile and Leon fell int embittered self-destruction, because she would not have stopped until one or all of them were dead, with the blood of the father on his sons' hands. Many times she dreamed that she would wake to the dead weight of the king upon her, and that she would run half-naked to the stables and ride away to the convent to take her Nadia and find a life across the Channel.

That was when he arrived.

Present

There was nothing that frustrated Elilah more than indecisiveness. It was a weakness of character, this caprice. It was all that he could think of as he leaned back on the wall and faced Blair.

The queen stood with her chin thrust up, like he had not just seen her half naked in her chambers, with the bloodstains of the night before staining the sheets. This was a display of confidence that she did not have. He knew it as clearly as he could see the glistening tears that gathered in her eyes.

"Elijah, he is still my husband and your brother."

"Tell me you have not fallen in love with my brother."

"I have always loved him."

"Not like this," Elijah said. He then tipped up her chin with a finger and told her, "You are a fool, and he will get you killed."

Blair pushed his hand away. "Tell me you could ever hurt your brother, Elijah. I know you care deeply for Klaus."

"What is it you are asking, your grace?" he asked, the address pointed, unmistakeable. She was the queen, and he would remind her of the many roles he played behind the scenes to give to her all that she could ever want.

"Your plan--"

"Ours," Elijah emphasized. "You shall not wash your hands of it, your grace. Not when we are close to completion, with an heir that may be sleeping in your belly this very moment." And then he smiled, straightened, and walked towards Blair. He stopped when he was so close he could reach up to touch her chin if he so chose, but stilled his hand. He lowered his face to meet her eye to eye, and toldd her, "Tell me you are not a woman to come under a man's thumb with merely a tumble." Blair sucked in her breath. Never had she been spoken to in so crass a manner, when most of her life she had been a girl who would be queen.

He could see the way her throat work as she swallowed. "You have committed to me. I see no difference between then and today, your grace, save for the coronation. When you agreed to this course of action, Niklaus was your husband and my brother--same as today." Elijah folded his arms across his chest. "I would have you remember the bodies that littered outside of Calais and across France. These last years across the Channel, you were with him part of his chevauchee."

He saw the flicker of emotion on her face, knew he had hit a tender spot.

"How many children's corpses did you see, Blair?" Before she could respond, he answered for her, "Countless. You have written of your nightmares and begged me to end it."

"No matter his actions over these past years I would have you remember that we both love him. Tell me he will not be hurt," Blair demanded.

"We will wrest the kingdom from his grip, Blair. He will most definitely be hurt, betrayed."

"But he will not die."

"What is it that you expected upon a overthrow of a king?" He could see the tears that gathered in her eyes, knew soon he needed to stop. But there was far more at stake than a flighty girl's wishes. This was not about wealth or power. Behind the queen he saw through the open archway, that movement, dark and quick like a woman who hid too well, too used to the shadows. The queen--this little girl who had come an unassuming sarifice into their home only to be thrust upon a throne--was not the spectre. And so his voice softened and he took her hand in his, raised it to kiss her knuckles. "I swear to you, what we are to do will only save his soul. The longer he is king, the more lives he will take." Each word falling from his tongue was like water to her straving soul, and he felt her grip tighten in her hope. "The closer he is to claiming France, the higher his ambition soars. "His ambition, Blair, is your enemy. My brother on a high of power has a very tenuous control over himself."

Above them, thunder began to roll. The queen looked up, her face intent. She waited with bated breath. "We will be drenched," she whispered. They were outside the hall, but still in the safe shelter within the castle walls. To make her way back to her chambers not a drop would fall on her should it rain.

"Make your way inside, my lady," Elijah offered. "There is time enough another day."

A loud clap of thunder, and a flash of lightning above them, and Elijah looked towards the open gardens where he had spied the shadowed figure earlier. The storm was too sudden and unexpected, for the season and the day that had passed. The temperature dropped suddenly, and Blair turned to make her way inside.

And a cry of surprise flew from her throat when a burst of glass erupted between them. His hand flew to his cheek at the sharp, biting pain, and Elijah felt the warmth of the blood seeping through his fingers. A piece of hail sat on the ground surrounded by broken glass from the window.

"Elijah, you have been hurt!" she exclaimed.

In concern, he thought of his Katerina, shadowed and hidden as she slipped into the gardens, caught in this fluke hailstorm. "Take shelter inside, your grace."

When Blair disappeared into the palace, Elijah gathered his cloak about him and emerged into the courtyard. To his surprise, the farther he was from the castle, the calmer was the sky. It was only a few dozen steps away that the sky was silent, and the ground green and dry.

And there she was, clothed in the dark, somber clothes she had worn much of the time they spent together. Her dark curls framed her face under the hood she wore. Despite this darkness she was his sun, and it was no less true as he emerged wounded from the hailstorm so mystic is vanished in the distance.

He remembered the whispers of the queen's practice, and remembered many a time he would find her in the woods. But Blair was his hope, perhaps the only one in Niklaus' bullish alliance with Castile all against France.

Loca, they called her.

They were all mad men and women, these Castilians, to have treated her so pitifully. A king's mistress when the king himself was a widower. A seductress when she had been a reluctant virgin. Abhorred for her being on the edge of madness when she needed sympathy from Castile for having her child taken from her.

She was his woman. That was all that England knew her to be, and all he would have England know her. Until he could give her back what she had lost, and gift her with what she deserved.

"Your mind seems far away, Katerina. Is it the English air, blowing your soul back home?"

Katerina turned around and at the sight of Elijah, she shook her head. Katerina's gentle thumb traced the open cut on his cheek, and Elijah set his jaw to contain what pleasure he felt, to keep it, to store and treasure on the days she was in that birthing room and not in her head. This touch assured him that the woman he loved was here, not hidden away, tucked behind memories that were nightmares.

She moistened her lips and replied, "You know there is only ever one reason I would think of any other place. My home is with you. It has been since the night that you stumbled into Giuseppe's court."

"Stumbled, Katerina? The Castilian guard had pushed me forward like some commoner found down the road."

"What mistake to have treated you like some lowly peasant," she murmured. "They could not know how long you can hold a grudge."

Elijah walked forward and then when Katerina turned her back to him once more to watch the stars, he wrapped his arms around her from behind. "I hold a grudge the way you nurture a thirst for vengeance in your belly, Katerina. And my grudge is in Castile's treatment of you, my loca."

He said the word to take away its power, to change what it meant to her. Perhaps the affection he could not keep from his voice would gentle the word to her, would make it scars less visible, the pains it caused less real.

Sent to Castile to form an alliance against France, Elijah had found hell in the hands of brigands eager for what little wealth he had brought with him. Without an offering or any proof of his purpose he had summarily been treated as a peasant baiting Castile's king, thrown into a dank chamber a little better than a dungeon until word from his own father arrived to authenticate his mission. Those deep dark days, his only visitor was this madwoman.

If he loved her less, perhaps he would not have been found sleeping in the bed of the king's mistress. If he loved her less, she would not have thrown herself at the mercy of the king, that he would be freed in exchange for her punishment.

Many things could have happened if he loved her less. But he loved her without measure.

Thrown out of Castile and any hope that she would hold her daughter again.

"This seat in Calais is but an obstacle, Katerina," he assured her.

"Perhaps I can secure a horse in the company that would take my sister to Castile."

She shook her head sadly. "Promise me nothing, Elijah. It hurts me when I hope."

He closed his eyes to soften the gentle words. He wrapped his arms around her, and breathed deep when she rested her head on his chest.

~o~o~

Blair no longer knew if the storm was chasing her, or if she was running towards it. The noise grew louder with every step she took. For the first time, the eerie voices from the Otherworld frightened her, and frantically she sought some passage, some escape, knowing there was none.

_Princess, you have forsaken us._

The voices grew. Louder. Louder.

Her head turned to the distant doorway leading to the hall. Blair stumbled towards it in the midst of the haze. She could not tell if the fog that rose around her was her own making, or whether it was in this world. She half-feared she was one foot within the Otherworld, and knew at once she needed to grab a hold of some physical thing here lest she become drawn somewhere she did not wish to be.

"Klaus," she whispered under her breath. Klaus would hold her, would ground her.

_Princess, the Dark Prince is ascended._

Blair stopped in her tracks. Through the mist surrounding her, she saw the shadowed figure. The Dark Prince in the mirror, now solid, now coming towards her. She whirled around to turn back, to run, to find another way inside the hall. Even as she turned she felt the cold of the air around her and the rush of the breeze. When she had turned around she saw the Dark Prince's silhouette blocking her way. Around, around. In all directions.

_There is no escape._

"No," she gasped. The Dark Prince reached toward her, and it was as if the freezing air parted. Blair felt reluctantly the pleasure brought by the warmth of him, was caught powerless that her body leaned forward towards him. "No."

Because he would destroy her.

She gathered her breath in her throat, and then prepared to scream out to call the attention of her guards, of her husband.

And then the air left her chest in the precise moment that the Dark Prince stepped out of the shadows, and she saw before her--

"Chuck Bass."

And then she was speechless. She stood still. His hand reached up and cradled her cheek, his thumb brushed over her cheekbone, tracing the angles of her face.

"You are mine."

And then, in awe, Blair watched as involuntarily her hand rose and he raised his hand, palm out towards her. She placed her hand against his that their palms would rest onto the other. Her lips parted at the burst of light from where their skins touched.

"We are inevitable," he told her.

At the words, Blair started to pull away, but his fingers closed around hers and he held onto her hand. "I am not yours," she protested. "Never was; never will."

With all the strength that she had, Blair severed the link and pulled violently away, stumbling on her own feet, falling to the floor and into the thick of the fog, knocking the air out of her lungs.

And then she was looking up, feeling warmth around her, chilled at the memory of that cold mist. Her eyes snapped open and she found herself looking up into the concerned gaze of her husband. At the comforting sight she grasped his clothes and pulled closer. "Are you well, Blair?"

"Where am I?" she whispered.

"Outside the hall," he answered. "We found you pale and fainted. My heart near stopped."

The words broke into the terror of memory, and gingerly her lips curved. She pulled closer still to him, and he stood with her in his arms. As he swept through the hall, Blair buried her lips into his neck, over where his heart beat so. She closed her eyes and leaned her head on his shoulder. "I love you," she said to him. "Always have." Her mind took her back to that day, a decade ago, as trembling she walked down the aisle to marry the large and beautiful stranger.

As he took the steps, and the rest of the court fell away, he said in the privacy of her company, "And I love you, princesse." He looked down at her, and she took the moment to raise her head so she could face him. "I always will."

And then her eyes fell, and she began, "I must confess to you--"

"It will not change," he assured her. "You are the light of my life."

_And in the dark--and in the dark--_

_In the darkness leading to the Otherworld, there lived a prince._

tbc


	15. Chapter 15

Part 14

The Dark Prince reeled in his consciousness, was sent into a tailspin. His eyes opened to the darkness that surrounded him. He stumbled on his feet.

"My lord," exclaimed Bonnie, who knelt before him with her smooth rune stones in organized chaos.

Chuck had not been expelled from a visit so quickly and completely. He had miscalculated, and the Druid before him panted at the pain to which she had been subjected.

Bonnie looked up at him, wiping with unsteady fingers the blood that had seeped out of her nose. "She cannot be so powerful," Bonnie insisted. "You say she has been touched."

"She has," Chuck growled.

"Then it cannot be. She cannot expel you and me together, mjesty."

Nathaniel watched with hooded eyes, and Chuck turned to him. The guardian spoke to the prince, "Allow me to take this obstacle into my hands, my lord." When Chuck did not respond, Nathaniel pressed, "Proof of death. There is no proof better than her heart in your hands, majesty."

"Think you I shall send you to your destruction, Nathaniel? If I cannot control her with the Druid's help, you would assume to have more power than your prince?"

"I have no reservations," answered Nathaniel.

At the words, Chuck's gaze narrowed. "Leave my sight," he commanded, words firm, voice sharp. He could feel the timid gaze of the Druid witch turn away. Nathaniel bowed deep before him, holding his gold-leafed sword before him.

When he was alone with Bonnie, Chuck stood before her. He glanced down at the runes, and sought to make sense of the rocks scattered before him.

"We will prevail, my lord," Bonnie assured him. "The halfling princess will soon sever her hold on the Otherworld. This world has far too many pleasures for a queen."

Chuck licked his lips. He reached towards a piece of rune that has rolled out of the sacred circle that Bonnie had created from roughly drawn small trenches in the ground. He picked up the stone and closed his hand over it. The small etched character on the rock near burned into his palm. Images roiled and rolled before his eyes, and the forest around them vanished into the background as he watched and experienced the visions and sensations that assailed him.

The sound of her voice as she breathed into his ear, right as they pressed against the wall of the gallery, when she had claimed that no one had ever made her feel so desired.

The lightning that struck him when his fingers brushed her hand on the ship.

Those lips, her hips.

And those eyes that haunted him still.

The back of her neck, smooth and pale, small and bare enough that he could wrap his arms around her throat and squeeze. It would be easy, Nathaniel pronounced, to take that life. Easier still to walk into the palace and declare that there halfline princess did not exist.

But it meant closing the portal forever, for protection, for the continued existence of the Otherworld.

"Take me back, Bonnie," he said to her. She took the rune stone into her hands and placed it in the heap with the rest.

"Home, my lord?"

"Take me to her mind, and I swear we will emerge victorious."

Bonnie nodded. Chanting a now familiar string, the Druid witch picked up the stones and laid them out. She hovered her palm over the stones and before him, the runes glowed and rolled and turned of their own volition. Bonnie held out her hands to him. He placed his hands on hers and closed his eyes.

And there she was, to everyone in his world the halfling heiress. She stood there, decked in a pale white dress, hand held out to him, an inviting smile on her face. Chuck walked towards her and extended his hand. And then he felt the uncomfortable shift and realized that she was looking past him, and through him the King of England walked until it was Klaus who took her hand.

He could hear the echo of her laughter, playful and light, could see her pulling her husband along with her through the corridors. Chuck picked up his pace and followed where the lovers led. He coud not recognize his surroundings, but knew enough to conclude as the two embraced and then together ran past her ladies.

He stopped.

They vanished into her chambers, and he dared not go past the doorway.

Chuck pulled his hands out of Bonnie's grip. The Druid opened her eyes and for a moment all he could see were the whites until she shook herself from the spell. "Majesty?"

"She is strong. I could not get past her walls," he offered. "I saw nothing."

~o~o~

How strange it was, she thought to herself, as her lips parted and her husband slipped into her, his length filling her, stretching her, so excruciatingly achingly full, and her breath slowly left her body.

He moved inside her, and her hands grasped at his back. She buried her fingers in his skin, deeper, harder, biting her lower lip as his lips scoured her neck with heated kisses.

"Klaus," she gasped, in that one lightning fast moment when he hit her core, and it was as if her body broke into tears. Blair was wet and slick and smooth, easing the way he drove into her.

And she loved him, she thought. More than she could ever think she would when she wed this beautiful man, more than she ever could admit before Elijah.

Thinking of a day when he would no longer be with her each day, if Elijah succeeded, if the mistakes of her past finally came back to haunt her.

Klaus' lips were on her chin now, and then over her mouth, and Blair was overwhelmed by her husband's complete the possession of her body. When he thrust, and it was as if their bodies were so close and tight their bodies were in touch at every inch and crevice, Blair quickly grasped his face in her hands.

"Klaus, my confession--"

And then he slowed, then stilled. He paused as he was fully sheathed inside of her, and she felt him with every breath, like he rested by a pulse of sensation inside her body.

It must be the look in her eyes, because he then told her, "I said it once, and still it is true, princesse." Only he could call her so, despite her coronation. Only he could say the word like such endearment that she would flush as each syllable. "There is no truth you can share that would change what we now have, this marriage that has made me regret the decade we have lost."

Because as much as he probably saw it in her eyes, she could see it stark and clear in his. This love. This love that was not given to many, she had been blessed. This love that far more surpassed what she had sought.

And she would not lose it. Never.

Especially not, despite his assurance, she could see the tense set of his face, reminiscent of the way he prepared for the battles he waged in France, when she waited to the side barely noticed.

She could not bear to say the words anymore, of Elijah and this plan, and all that had transpired in secret, of the pleas to her brother-in-law and the succeeding goal.

"I am not with child," she said instead. "I know how madly this country wants your son."

And then he lifted his weight from her chest, raising himself up so he would rest on an arm. He freed one arm and reached down, to her hip, and held gently down as he raised his hip. Her heart began to sink as he pulled slowly out of her. Halfway out, and then with one powerful thrust he was inside her, all the way through. His face lingered over hers, so near she felt his breath upon her.

"We have a lifetime, Blair. A child will come," he told her. And then again he moved out and into her. He kissed the corner of her mouth, and she turned her head so she could meet his kiss.

It was dawn when she felt him reluctantly pull away from her. Blair gathered the sheets around her and sat up to find him putting on his discarded clothes. She reached for his hand and pleaded, "Come lie with me, Niklaus. It is yet dark."

"The lords in court expect a hunt, Blair. Sleep and regain your strength. I fear you are unused to such exertion," he teased her with a small smirk.

She laid back on the bed and stretched her body languidly. "Will you change in your chambers?"

"My page awaits," he told her. And then he sat beside her on the bed and leaned down to kiss her. She wrapped an arm around his neck. "I shall long for you, and will count the moments until I am returned to you."

~o~o~

It was past noon when the hunting party returned, unannounced. Blair saw the horses and the men arriving from her window, throwing up a cloud of dust in their haste. She rushed from her chambers and the corridors towards the courtyard, having sworn that she would greet her husband upon his return.

The welcoming smile on her face fell at the approach. The party was different, somber, unlike any other time she had seen a hunting party return. Her eyes scanned the incoming horses for that of Niklaus', and her heart beat frantically in her chest when she could not recognize it.

A cry of panic erupted from her throat when finally she saw Klaus riding with one of his men, his leather vest torn, the tunic bloodstained. She burst into a run towards the arriving party, but Bekah caught her around her waist and held her back.

"Your grace, you will be crushed by the beasts. Stay," was the muttered command into her ear. She turned to Bekah, and saw the determined look in her eyes. "You know how hardy Nik is. He is barely hurt he can still ride astride."

At the gentle reminder, Blair forced a small smile. "You would have me lose my head, sister, only when my husband is brought home thrown over a horse."

"Even then he would still be hardy and there will be no cause for worry."

When the men had climbed off, and Klaus had jumped off the horse, Blair ran forward to her husband's side. The king stumbled to the side, and Blair thew his arm over her shoulders to steady him. He hissed in pain at the action as it forced his wound, and before she realized his soiled bloodied thumb was brushing away a tear from his cheek.

"Have you got your rest, princesse?" he asked teasingly. And she dried her tears, knew from his words she should not cry. Not in front of all these men. "I shall be back in your bed much earlier than expected."

Blair chuckled, and then allowed a couple of his men to take his weight. "And you shall keep me up while nursing you."

"Pour a gallon of aqua vitae in the wound and into my throat, I shall be hale."

Surounding them, she realized, was a tight circle of Klaus' closest knights and lords. Even Rebekah could not come close. Her heart tightened at the realization of what this truly was. The terse conversation around them as the king was hurried to her chambers told her the truth.

'Frayed saddle,' she heard from one.

Another spoke of, 'The wayward arrow.'

The king's physician was at once called to clean and dress the wound and look for possible infection. Blair waited quietly to the side, catching her husband's gaze once in a while. When the wound was dressed and the king was changed into clean clothes, he ordered the guards and the doctor to vacate the chambers.

"Come."

Blair looked down at the floor, and then walked towards the bed. She knelt at the side of the bed, and then clasped her hands together. He reached for her fist and then with his fingers coaxed it to open so he could intertwine their fingers. "How calm you were--such a perfect queen."

And then, with that kind remark, her shoulders trembled and she broke into tears. Klaus hushed her gently, comforting her, guiding her so she could lie by his side. She buried her face in his chest. And he allowed her to sob, waited until she raised her head finally to look at him. "This was an attempt on your life," she said accusingly, fearful he would deny it.

"I am king, Blair," was the answer.

"Will I live in fear each day you leave my bed, Niklaus, that you are never to return?"

He closed his eyes, laid back his head, and answered softly, his voice already cloudy from what drugs the physician administered, "Perhaps I will never leave the pleasure of your bed again."

Her husband fell into his deep--and she hoped, healing--sleep. She lay beside him clutching at him, unwilling to leave until her body no longer trembled, and her knees no longer weak. When finally she could tear herself away, Blair emerged from her privy chamber and asked her ladies to help her change from the blood-stained gown.

And she close a deep purple down, one she reserved for occasions that befit the colors of the monarchy. She had worn purple once to receive a visiting king, and had planned to wear the same to meet Rebekah's husband. This time, she suited herself in the regalia, and chose select jewelry from the royal collection. Her ladies looked at her askance, but Blair remained expressionless as she prepared to look the part of the queen for the first time since her coronation.

"Send for the king's brother," she said curtly. "I will see him in my receiving room."

Blair took a seat in the grand chair and held her head high. Moments later Elijah stepped inside, and Blair dismissed the guard and her ladies with a gesture.

"You summoned me?" Elijah asked.

Instead of a direct answer, Blair held out her hand and displayed the queen's seal on her ring. Elijah's jaw tightened at the sight, and at what it represented. He walked towards Blair, then knelt before her. He reached for her hand and kissed it.

With his head lowered and him on his knees, Blair declared, "You will cease this, Elijah." At the words, Elijah looked up to answer, but Blair cut him, "I have not granted you permission to look at your queen."

She heard the harsh breathing coming from Elijah as he struggled to contain his own temper. Still, inside these halls, Blair knew she was secure. "Forgive me, your grace. I am forgetful, having treated you long as my sister, that you are now my sovereign."

"I was always going to be your sovereign, Elijah, from the night I arrived in this castle," she reminded him. "Now I demand you cease any attempt on my husband." Her voice hitched, and she cursed that she was still weak to show emotion. "I will not be regent to an infant king, Elijah."

"Your grace, I beg you allow me to face you."

Slowly, she replied, "You may look at me, but remain on your knee."

Finally, Elijah raised her head so he could look at Blair. "Think you, your grace, that I would be so foolish as to murder my brother without assurance of his heir? If I shall do it--and I will not--I will ensure your son is born and near grown. I will not throw this country into chaos without an heir apparent."

Blair's posture eased, and she looked down at her brother-in-law and pleaded, "End this plan, Elijah. Let us be."

"If I can overthrow him and keep him alive--"

"No," she insisted.

"I thought all you wanted was to stop the bloodshed? If your husband is not in power no one will raise an army against France. You can raise your son as you will. Trust me, Blair, to have a Mikaelson man raise your son will turn him into a killer."

"Like you?" she whispered. "You swore to me Klaus will not get hurt."

"For the last time, it was not I."

Blair looked deep into Elijah's eyes, then nodded, "Then find the culprit and destroy them."

It did not take long, and for that Blair was grateful. In the night after the attack on the king, she stood in the judgment hall and watched as a struggling Baron Lockwood is pulled in and thrown to the floor before her. Behind her, to assure the kingdom, Klaus sat on his throne to watch the proceedings.

"What say you, Baron Lockwood?" she asked firmly. Blair could feel the heat of her husband's gaze.

"Do you truly think that I, as humble a servant as I am, would be capable?" Baron Lockwood demanded.

"We think you not capable," the king interjected, "and thus the attempt failed."

A frantic struggle to the side of the audience caught her attention. Blair looked towards the crowd, and then recognized the lady held back by the guards. The queen nodded to the guards, who released the baroness.

Hayley walked towards the throne, stood below where the king sat. "Please, your grace, I am begging you. My child," she emphasized, and Blair swallowed at the reference to the child that until now Klaus did not recognize while most of the court whispered behind her back, "cannot be fatherless."

"You are young and lovely, baroness," was the king's response. "I am certain you can find another match."

The answer was crude, cold. Blair glanced towards her husband who barely looked at the woman who bore his daughter. Fear flickered in her gut. She met Elijah's eyes as he stood by the accused.

Hayley turned to Elijah, and knelt before him. She took his hands in hers and begged, kissing his knuckles.

"Take the baron to the dungeons," pronounced the king, unmoved by his former mistress' pleas. "Puclic execution is tomorrow. Let the people see that those who hurt this family will not escape unharmed." Blair turned to her husband and walked towards him. He took her hand and kissed the back of it. "I would that you not come to the execution, princesse. It is not a sight that I would wish on you." Her eyes were half veiled as she lowered the lids.

  
tbc


	16. Part 15

Part 15

The baroness' pleas seemed to fall on ears deafened by indifference or true anger—Blair knew not which. All she knew as she was led away, was that there was a throb, a hitch in Hayley's voice that Blair recognized as loss. 

For Blair the interminable wait was punishment in itself, to not know or see how her husband held up against the specter of impending death at his command. A battle was a world away from this—calculated and unforgiving judgment. In battle his sword came down, and bloodied her beloved France, for passion and for the crown. This—sending a man to his execution—was an entire person of her husband she had not known prior.

Blair was afraid that he would relish this.

And if he did, and still she loved him—what would it make of her?

When her husband entered her chambers, his shoulders slumped. Klaus sat heavily on the edge of her bed and it was she who moved towards him and rested a hand on the stiff muscles of his back. The ashen gray that bordered his lips confirmed her fear, and Blair knew his healing body pushed in pain. Pity for a king showed disrespect, and so instead Blair rested a cheek on the back of his shoulder and laid a comforting hand on his thigh.

"Do you understand?" he rasped. In the privacy of their chambers, she appreciated that he allowed for the weakness in his voice, for the plea she heard in his tone. "Do you, Blair, or do you think me now the same evil tyrant from before?"

Her gaze fell to the sheets, where his fingers curled and his one trembling hand burrowed. Slowly she reached down to trace a finger across the back of his hand, where angry veins were raised, where his blood ran, a hand she knew she would have cradled had the baron been successful.

"If he had killed you, and I was cetain it was he, his corpse would burn in the city, and I would not turn my eyes away," she confessed, and after that there was a chill in her heart, because she recognized it was no lie. In fact, there had been thrill that lay beneath her guilt at that admission. "Klaus," she whispered upon the realization, "there is darkness in my heart."

And then he turned her face to him, and her tears shone in her eyes. She held her breath as slowly he kissed away what tears had spilled. "We all are capable of darkness," he said to her.

Blair took a deep calming breath. "A heart that has no compassion is incapable of love."

"A heart that loves is one to be feared the most," he returned. "A heart that loves is one that hates with equal fervor." And then straightened, took her hand in his and brought it to his lips. "If I prove his actions, will you object his execution?"

She was falling.

Falling.

Because of her love for him, she could fall.

Blair squeezed shut her eyes, and called to her heart. Blood spilled for revenge was no different from blood that Niklaus spilled in war. And then when she opened her eyes, all she could see and drink was the face that overwhelmed all else in her life today.

And what she knew was washed away, what she believed warped into fairy tale dreams and imagination. Without this, she could lose him.

"If you prove his guilt, take him to me," she answered. "I will myself end him."

And Niklaus pulled himself up to his feet, then laid a kiss on her temple. "I adore you," he told her. "And I will destroy any man who would dare take me from you. I swear it on my crown, and on the life of every man in my kingdom."

Despite his weakness—she knew he was weak still—he extricated himself and rose. She could not call to him to stay. For the hatred she now nursed against the baron, her husband needed to prove his intent. When Klaus left the chambers one of her ladies stepped inside, and Blair waved her away and asked to be alone.

She could those invisible eyes boring into her soul, those blind eyes, those sharp, all-seeing blind eyes. Those souls that knew not what it was to live in this dark, wretched world, that visited her at her most peaceful, they that only sought to take and ask and demand salvation but had no hand in her rearing -- they watched her invisible through the mirror. Blair walked towards it and stood before her reflection.

That Blair in the mirror was a queen, a wife who loved and was loved with an intensity she had never thought possible since she walked into the castle a child bride. Yet those eyes that looked back at her were the saddest she had seen.

It was perhaps the memory of his large hand wrapped around hers, that sensation of security she knew she never before had until she knew her husband loved her like she needed to be loved. Before today all she could do was struggle as the whispers pulled her in deeper. Now, in a fit of despair, she spoke into the nothingness. “I will not allow you to dictate my choices,” she whispered back, knowing they heard her, even as she was alone. “Not where there is Niklaus.”

They were silent.

And then there was a heavy presence in her chambers. Her skin crawled, and she realized the hostility before she saw him. Swiftly she whirled, and then saw the man in the shadows right by the shuttered window. Blair caught her breath, then took a step back towards the doorway. And then the figure was on her, overwhelming her. All she could see were glimpses of golden hair as they blinded her. There was such force in his fist at her abdomen. She felt the tip of the blade press on her stomach, and immediately her hands shot out from her sides to push him away.

And it was like cold fire burning her palms.

The force of the energy enough to knock her back against the opposite wall, gasping for breath.

The figure was thrown against the far wall, and quickly he picked himself up and jumped through the thin wooden boards and out of the window. Blair rushed towards where he had escaped. They were too high for her assailant not be hurt from the fall. Instead she saw the man run with a speed she thought inhuman. The man turned his head to look back up at her, and Blair's lips parted at the glimpse of him.

“Nathaniel,” she whispered. Nathaniel—or one disguised to appear as he—had made an attempt on her life. 

Inevitable, Chuck Bass had called them in her vision. Inevitable, yet here was his man who had thought to kill her.

Inevitable then, she thought, that she would terminate him.

She caught sight of the glistening weapon on the floor. Blair knelt before it and gingerly picked it up. She had not seen metal that shone as cleanly and blindingly as it did. Her fingers explored the blade itself, traced the intricate pattern of the curling leaves that adorned either side of it.

She had not seen them before, but knew it was familiar.

Into the door burst one of her ladies. “Your grace, we heard the noise. Are you alright?” Blair looked up, cradling the blade in her hands. The lady looked towards the broken shutters, and at once decided, “I shall fetch the king, madame.”

“No!” Blair called, but her lady had run off in search of her husband, and Blair could not find the strength to rise. 

The effect had been a slow spread. First, she had been breathless, and then she felt her heart strong and rapid. The dagger fell to her gown, on her lap, and the weight of it brought the tremors in her thighs, the melting of her knees. Try as she might, she could not move. Try as she might she could not hold herself up. Her hands fell to the floor, the only reason she did not fall. She sucked in large gulps of air, but still felt breathless.

There was a man in her own chambers, intent on killing her. And she could not know her own body. There had been no incantation, no ash from the white oak tree. How it was she expelled him, she did not know. 

However it was, it saved her life.

Whatever it was, would tell the world she was not completely of this earth. She would not suffer through Niklaus knowing, would not watch his love fade into disgust. She had hidden her true self far too long to be discovered in this moment of weakness.

And then he was there, kneeling before her, reaching a warm hand to her cheek. She looked up at him, his weary, worried face. She could tell him she protected herself, that she had not been hurt, that—thanks to this power she could not comprehend nor known she bore, no mortal man would kill her.

Instead she abhorred the words as they fell, “He was in my chambers, Klaus. He was in my home.”

“Did you see him?”

She shook her head, did not meet her eyes. “I could not tell who it was.” 

Blair nodded towards the dagger, which Niklaus took in his hands. She was dead weight, she knew. But Niklaus in his injury helped her to her feet. His gaze landed on her gown, then darkened. Blair looked down and saw the large cut and the small blooming blood that formed around it.

She had felt the force of the blade. There was no way, she thought, that it was all the damage that it had done.

And then slowly it dawned on her. Knew she was with a soul more powerful. Knew a soul was joined with hers.

She swallowed. They could not dictate to her, not when it involved her family. Blair grasped Niklaus hand.

“What happened, Blair?”

Her eyes filled, but she could not bear to lose him. Not now. Not when they were on the verge of building this life. “Come away with me, Klaus,” she pleaded. And then she imagined a child running free, away from this city and this throne—away from her regrettable pact with Elijah, far from where she could affect the rise and fall of kingdoms. As powerful as he seemed to be, this child needed to be far away from this turmoil.“Let us be in Castle Mere. London is not safe for us.”

He took her into his embrace, and then pressed a kiss on her head. “I will have your ladies prepare for a journey,” he whispered to her. She smiled, nodded as she inhaled the scent of him. She could not wait until they were away, when she could tell him about their family, and she could forget everything else. “You will be off soon.”

And then she raised her head and looked up in askance. “I?”

“I would have you safe away from the hell our court has turned out to be,” he told her. “But I will not run away without flushing out the perpetrator. I will not suffer this betrayal, especially not an attempt on your life.” Before she could object, he brought her hand to his lips. “As soon as this is done, I will be on the road. Nothing will keep me away from you, princesse.”

This was not what she wanted, knew a sense of dread that overcame her. She pleaded with him in a fervent whisper, “Come with me, Klaus.”

“I swear I will.”

She felt this ghost of a feeling, a sense memory, of something unreal, unseen—It was his touch that faded away, leaving her cold. This court was infested, and his life was threatened. More than he had before been endangered on the battlefield, the threat to Klaus existed where he could not think to suspect.

“Come with me today. Do not send me away.”

“I shall find for you the most steadfast guard,” he vowed to her. “And you will arrive in Castle Mere, Blair, safe and hale.” He allowed himself to pause, looked at her, into her eyes, and used a voice stern with warning, “This is not for discussion.”

Mistakenly he thought she was afraid for herself, knowing not she was stronger now whilst his child grew inside her. She could see his resolution on his face, and for the first time in a long while Blair felt once again a child he left behind at camp while he waged his war. But she was his wife now, a wife he proclaimed to love. At the tip of her tongue lingered Elijah's name. Yet it would have been impossible, and she would never convince him unless she confessed her own sins.

“I want Elijah,” she cut in. With his brother within her sight, she could at least keep Klaus safe from his brother's machinations. “Elijah shall take me to Castle Mere,” Blair decided.

“My brother is no warrior. I shall not trust your life to him,” he told her.

~o~o~

To those that arrived to see the court for the very first time, the throne room was imperious. It was as much as display of wealth as it was power. Caroline half feared it when she walked into the hall that first time, knowing even then the king's affection for her. Today her eyes darted back and forth, eyeing where it was that the king was. Odd, she thought, that there was some anticipation that sank in her belly. Her heart started to pump rapidly.

The musicians played for the court fastpaced and bawdy songs. The queen favored gentler, and so Caroline's gaze landed on the empty throne. Both the king and the queen were gone this night, and she did not wish to wonder what occupied their time.

The king would be sent for, as was required. The prince of Asturias, the sons of Leon and Castile, could not arrive in the English court with not an appearance from the king, especially not when Klaus would be handing over his youngest sister Rebekah to wife, especially when Castile had sworn soldiers to England in the war against France.

There was a brief, slight touch on the back of her hand. In surprise, she looked up to her side and saw her companion looking down at her with a smile.

“I can hear your heartbeat from here,” he teased with a smile. “Trust me.”

Caroline's eyes widened. It was the first time a nobleman had been so warm, so kind. Even Klaus, with all of his hospitality, had had this underlying shimmer of coldness beneath his words. Even Klaus, she recognized, was kind because he wanted from her. 

“I trust you, Stefan,” she forced out. It would be foolish not to; she was here now. And then she brightened, “Shall you meet your bride?” Caroline prompted.

“I hear she is a beautiful Nordic goddess,” Damon piped from beside Stefan. He cocked an eyebrow at Caroline. “Is she?”

Caroline swallowed. “She is imposing.” 

At her words, Damon grinned. “Imposing requires much work. I am glad it is your work, not mine, brother.” And then he scanned the crowd, his eyes glittering at the prospect. “Green field,” he murmured. “Which of the queen's ladies is free for the taking?”

Caroline started to object to the question, but Stefan waved the words away. With an emphatic shake of his head, Caroline remained quiet. Damon honed in on a figure, ambled over towards the lady. When Caroline saw who it was, she turned to Stefan. “Your brother will return unsatisfied by the time this song is done.”

Stefan turned to Damon's pursuit, and then said quietly, lightly, to his companion. “By now he would bandy about that he is a prince.”

Caroline chuckled, and then pulled Stefan to face away from his brother. She held up her fingers, counting down. When her fingers completed her count down, and all she raised was a closed fist, Damon made his way back to them. “The baroness apparently had no interest in making a friend.”

Stefan raised his eyebrows in surprise. Caroline clarified, “The baroness had just given birth to the king's daughter,” she whispered to the two.”

Damon stepped closer. “Then, brother, we are allying ourselves with a madman,” he decided. He nodded back towards the baroness. The three looked over and saw Baroness Lockwood craning her neck, watching in anticipation, wringing her hands together. “That woman is waiting to beg pardon for her husband, whom the king had adjudged for execution.”

Caroline gasped. She had only a brief glance of the handsome young Baron Lockwood during the birth, and despite his impulsiveness and bearing it showed that he cared for his wife. Poor baroness, she thought. With the king not recognizing her child, she would be widowed so suddenly.

“She would be stripped of her title, you know,” Damon informed her. “Such is the nature of an execution. The baron found himself out of favor—and his family suffers for his own ignorant actions.”

“What did he do?” she whispered.

“He tried to murder the king, the little prick.”

Caroline gasped, her eyes wide when she stammered, “He did?”

“Fortunately, the Black Prince is hardier than some baron's prey,” came the familiar, wonderful drawl that she had grown to miss. Caroline turned around. Her lips parted at the sight of Niklaus, walking towards them, slower than she remember, his skin a tad ashen, but otherwise hale. “I am surprised to see you, Caroline. I had thought you would be long gone.”

“Your grace,” Caroline greeted quickly, dropping into an unsteady curtsy. “I am truly happy to see you are no worse for wear.”

Niklaus gestured for her to rise. “You are kind,” he said to her. “I regret how our—friendship—ended, Caroline. Perhaps you will find time to speak in the gardens one of these days.”

She opened her lips to reply, but she could not find her voice. She threw a distressed look towards Stefan, who rescued her by stepping forward and bowing to the king. Close behind him followed Damon.

“Stefan de Salvatore, your grace.”

“Damon de Salvatore, Prince of Asturias, your grace. We are at your service, and come to take the princess to her new home in Castile.”

Klaus nodded, and ushered them towards the raised dais for their meal. Caroline remained in place below the dais, and did not take the step with them. She knew her place, and it was not up where monarchs sat. Stefan looked back down and extended a hand to her. When princess Rebekah walked into the hall, Klaus gestured towards her. Caroline could see the open admiration of the Salvatore brothers. Stefan walked towards the princess, his bride, and escorted her across the hall and up the dais.

Caroline felt the warm hand rest on the small of her back. Damon whispered into her ear, “Little brother has a wife, and a king to assure. Do me the honor of being my guest.”

Caroline felt Klaus' gaze. She looked up and saw him nod towards her, so she walked with Damon and took a place at the long table.

“Nik, how fares Blair? Shall we leave a seat for her?” Rebekah inquired.

“She is resting,” Klaus answered. His gaze went towards the entryway, and away from Caroline. Caroline could tell immediately what it was that the princess intended. “It has been a trying day.”

“I am sure,” Bekah replied. She glanced again towards Caroline, whom Damon had ushered a mere two seats beside Niklaus. The princess gestured to a sever, and then requested, “Please have one of the queen's ladies see if she wishes to be served in her chambers, or if she wishes to join her husband at the hall.”

Caroline flushed, knowing most of the words were meant for her to hear. And then--

“Oh, Caroline!” Rebekah greeted, sweetly and in mock surprise. “I did not realize our hostage had returned and is seated with us. Did Niklaus not have you serve as Blair's lady for a time?”

Caroline looked back at Rebekah, and replied, “The king honored me so.”

Rebekah gave her a smile, and said, “Well then, you know the way. Will you please see to the queen? I know she would want to sit by her husband and meet mine.”

With a thin smile, Caroline pushed away from the table before Damon could rise to pull her chair back. “Of course,” Caroline answered. 

She thought she would be unsteady as she climbed down the dais and made the long walk towards the doors. Caroline swore she could feel the king, Stefan, Damon, Rebekah, and everyone else as she made her way from the king's table and across the hall. And so Caroline quickened her pace, eager for the protection of the corridor walls that would obscure her from view.

The moment she turned, and she was hidden from those prying eyes, Caroline rested her back against the cool wall. She waited for the flush to subside. The corridor was empty. Most of the inhabitants and gusts of the castle were in supper, celebrating this time the Asturian princes. 

Once again she would face the queen. She took a deep breath and started on her way once more. She walked into the chambers, past the cots where the queen's ladies would sleep. When she reached the privy chambers of the queen she used the brass ring to knock on the door.

“Your grace, it is I, Caroline.”

The door opened, and Caroline readied herself to face Blair. Instead she saw a servant cleaning up what seemed to be shattered wooden planks on the floor. Her lips parted. She turned towards the bed, and found Dorota folding and placing garments into four chests open on the floor.

“Where is the queen?” Caroline inquired.

Dorota looked up and frowned. “Mademoiselle Forbes,” she said in surprise. And then Dorota offered, “Baron Lockwood has asked to see the queen. The king fetched the queen but moments ago to hear the baron's confession.” 

Caroline stepped backwards. Once she was past the doorway, she whirled around and quickly made her way back to the dining hall. She walked, faster, faster, until she burst into a run. Suddenly it seemed as it the corridor was longer, going around and around, endless. She turned around and looked at the tapestries on the wall that seemed to repeat over and over and over.

She must have been gone so long. She was overtired. Yet still Caroline ran through the corridor in search of the dining hall. In one of her rounds her coat fell from her back. Caroline picked it up and when she stood she found herself staring at the doorway.

Gingerly, Caroline parted the curtains and found herself looking into the dining hall. She was exhausted, but still burst into a run towards the dais. She clambered up the steps and panted before the king. “I apologize, your grace, for taking too long.”

Damon chuckled and shook her head. “You were gone but moments, my lady.”

At her look of utter confusion, Klaus abruptly stood. He walked over to her, grasped her elbow and took her aside. “Where is the queen, Caroline.”

She looked up a him, met his eyes, and challenged him, “You took her.”

tbc


End file.
